In a lengthy column in Saturday's Irish Examiner, Donal Óg Cusack gauges the state of the hurling landscape.
The former Cork goalkeeper assesses the status of every All-Ireland contender and outlines what he believes they need to do in order to compete in what he calls hurling's 'death zone'. That is, the second half of an All-Ireland final against Kilkenny - where Galway came undone this year.
Along with suggesting that hurling requires a black card type sanction, Cusack also has an idea to make the stars of his sport just a little bit more marketable.
There are things we need to change. Our media performance is woeful. A top politician asked me during the year could I get him a leading hurler and footballer for an event. He had a list of footballers. Of hurlers he could name Henry (retired) and when pressed, Joe Canning. People might laugh at that but if you walked into a pub and the Galway and Kilkenny teams were sitting at tables around the place in their street gear, how many would you recognise?
We need names on the backs of jerseys.
In US sport, some of the most marketable stars are in basketball, unlike in the country's most popular sport - NFL - players do not wear helmets and so are more recognisable.
Since helmets became mandatory in hurling it has become harder for the casual fan to recognise players on the pitch. Having names on the backs of jerseys would certainly go part of the way to increasing the star factor of many hurlers.
Picture credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE / Web Summit
