In today’s Hospital Pass, we discuss the extremely premature reports of Ger Loughnane’s demise and a pretty simple way the GAA could come up with the cash for Hawk-Eye.
Like most GAA fans around the country this morning, here in JOE Towers we were saddened and completely taken aback to learn of the death of one of the stalwarts of the association, Clare legend Ger Loughnane.
He had his critics, Lord did he have his critics, but even amongst his detractors there was always a deep respect for a man who dragged Clare hurling up from the doldrums in the 90s and more recently, provided some of the most entertaining, if controversial, GAA punditry of the modern age.
But hold on a second. Loughnane wasn’t dead at all, but merely the subject of a vicious hoax on various social networking sites, notably Twitter. Great and all as it is for breaking news, the folly of Twitter is exposed in a situation like this, where a story gets legs and runs all over the place.
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. This is a man who, directly or indirectly, has given us some of the best GAA quotes we’ll ever see, so we were just delighted Ger was still with us.
On his love of Tipperary, he once said: “I’m not giving away any secrets like that to Tipperary. If I had my way, I wouldn’t even tell them the time of the throw-in.”
There was also the testimony of an anonymous former player who was subject to Loughnane’s notoriously difficult training sessions: “Ger Loughnane was fair,” he said. “He treated us all the same during training – like dogs.”
There isn’t a better man for the battle. As he said to his former on-pitch lieutenant Anthony Daly in the aftermath of his leukaemia diagnosis, “It’ll be tough, but tough we can do, Dalo.”
Get well soon, Ger.
Play it again for Hawk-Eye
Elsewhere, it was business as usual in the GAA today, with word emanating from Croke Park that the possibility of Hawk-Eye being introduced from next season onwards is a remote one, as it would cost in the region of half a million quid to install it at all Championship venues.
Discounting the fact that the GAA could use sponsorship to cover a lot of the costs involved, it seems a pretty feeble excuse given the controversy caused only last weekend, and the high-profile support the idea has attracted from the likes of Kieran McGeeney and Kieran Donaghy (more on that one on this website tomorrow) in recent days.
We’re throwing our support behind the idea and feel that the powers that be are blithely ignoring a simple method of coming up with the necessary cash.
Between the All-Ireland football and hurling championships, there are at least 11 games left this season, all at Croke Park. We reckon that if a word was had in the ears of the referees in charge and even two of those games went to a replay, that the money required would be generated from paying punters.
And, let’s be realistic here, it’s not as if it’s a tactic that hasn’t been used by the Association in the past.
