When most retired players are asked about their biggest gripe with modern hurling, you usually hear the same refrain.
The ex-player will shift in their seat, sigh loudly, and announce that 'referees are blowing for everything these days.'
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Former Galway corner back Greg Kennedy has a different and wholly original bugbear.
At a national level, Kennedy is perhaps best remembered for leaving an indelible impression on the career of one Henry Shefflin, having psychologically battered him for almost 70 minutes in the famous All-Ireland semi-final of 2001. Galway beat Kilkenny by five points and Kennedy spent most of the match yammering in Shefflin's ear, winding him up and getting him off his game. We say 'almost 70 minutes' for Kennedy was sent off near the end of the match.
(Also, and not to rake up old tales, but a past legal wobble of his may have treated us to the finest line ever written in an Irish court report. He was cleared of wrongdoing, we should add.)
Gregory's chief bugbear, as explained to John Fogarty in the Irish Examiner, is a modern phenomenon, one that the self-ironising John Mullane taught as part of his skills of hurling module on Second Captains.
The celebratory fist-pump after winning a free.
This fist-pumping after scoring or winning a free, it drives me bananas. The only time you should be encouraging yourself or celebrating like that is when you’ve the game won or when you win a ball, clear it and shout over to the next fella ‘we have to keep doing more of that’.
There’s no need for the dramatics. It doesn’t look right and it’s not something you see Kilkenny doing often. Win your own ball, find a team-mate, move on. Find the posts, anticipate the puck-out, move on.
Here's John Mullane module 'Introduction to the Celebratory Fist-Pump'
