Hurling needs leadership gaslighting GAA can't provide

The news that the GAA intends to send five counties out of the Allianz Hurling League is only surprising because a lot of people seem to be surprised. 

The GAA has long been gaslighting people about hurling. As concerned voices lament the failing crops, the GAA deflects. The GAA says, look here's a picture of two lush ears of corn, Limerick and Clare, in the sunshine. Stop imagining, your worries are mere illusions.

Croke Park has perfected the art of persuading people that motion is action, that intentions signify progress. Review bodies, pats on the back and lip service are tools of the trade.  

Telling five counties that are struggling to keep hurling alive that their inter-county season will now be three months long is something we should have seen coming. Another committee had the idea of creating the job of national hurling director. It was a good idea, but it was a half measure. Asking one man, Martin Fogarty, to grow the game when a full task force was needed was the cheap option. 

Hurling needed an army, serious funding plus political backing from Croke Park. Fogarty wore himself to a frazzle representing hurling in places where many would prefer to forget about the game. When he finished his five-year contract, he was neither offered a new contract nor replaced.  

Maybe that says it all, and while some of us have long made our feelings known, it is worth saying more for the sake of hurling. Hurling people must continue to raise the clarion call.

First, the GAA doesn't own hurling. Nobody does. The GAA undertook to be the guardian of the game, to nurture it. The GAA has failed in what it set out to do. There is so much to love in the GAA, and like countless more and like my father and grandfather, I was born into it,