Game on Ger!

The Hurling championship will hopefully spark to life this weekend when we have the Quarter-Finals between Dublin and Waterford and Cork and Galway. The games, the crowds, the match programmes, the consequences - they all get bigger this time of year.

All four teams battle it out for the chance to take on either of the big guns - Kilkenny and Tipperary, in the All-Ireland semis at Croke Park.

A lot of talk these days about tactics playing a bigger part in hurling - mainly due to Waterford's defensive strategy which brought them huge success until they came up short against Tipperary in the Munster final a couple of weeks ago. Kilkenny have played sweepers for a few years now and Clare adopted that tactic too to deliver a Liam MacCarthy a couple of seasons ago.

Anyway, it was interesting to read on GAA.ie Brian Hogan's viewpoint on the game since he's retired.
Hogan believes a team's hunger is still what drives them on more and that tactics only play a smaller part.

You can read the Brian Hogan piece here

This all brought back to me a famous Cyril Farrell quote when working as co-commentator for a Kilkenny game on RTÉ.

I recreated it in the illustration below-