Laois, square balls and GAA on the wireless

The Championship is here, so let us reintroduce you to Hospital Pass, JOE’s sidelong look at all things GAA which will be with you every weekday afternoon until All-Ireland football final week in September.

By Shane Breslin

Ah, the middle of May. For some people the year begins on January 1^st. For some people, Chinese, mostly, it begins four or five weeks later. For GAA folk the year begins in the middle of May.

With Championship football action at five venues all around the country, the Sunday Game back on our TV screens and the sun itself daring to warm our backs, the May 20 was, in every way, just about the start of the summer for GAA people.

And just about the end of it, for GAA people in Laois.

For it’s there that we start in our first Hospital Pass of 2012: Laois. There was a sense of a new dawn last year under Justin McNulty, the teak-tough former All-Ireland winning Armagh defender, but if there was indeed a dawn, we could already be near the dusk of that particular day.

Relegation from Division 1 after a single miserable campaign in the top division was bad enough, and getting dumped out of the Leinster championship at the first time of asking by a Longford side dizzy from a first provincial championship win in five years was even worse.

But worst of all was the unmistakable sense that the Laois players didn’t really know the rules of the game they were playing. This weekend was the first on which the new square ball rule was in evidence. It didn’t take much understanding – from frees, 45s and sideline balls, the old rule remained: i.e. you can’t enter the square before the ball. From everything else it’s anything goes. Almost. You can’t take the head off the goalkeeper, like, but you can invade his private fiefdom without being held to ransom by those over-protective referees.

So when Laois were chasing a two-point deficit in injury time, there was always going to be a chance of a high-ball-induced goalmouth skirmish. But instead of taking a short free before chipping the ball into the small square they decided to ignore the rather precise terms of the new rule and hope that the ref hadn’t done his homework.

A bit unfortunately for Laois, and a bit surprisingly for the rest of us given his performances in summers past, ref Michael Duffy (pictured top) knew his stuff. The whistle blew for the free out, Longford let go the mother of all sighs of relief and Duffy got an earful of static from a handful of Laois players. A handful of Laois players who don’t seem to have been doing their homework.

Ger and the boys choke in Newstalk's smoke

The start of every Championship summer sees the start of Championship coverage, and the days when RTE enjoyed a cosy cartel of all the action are long gone. RTE, TV3 and Newstalk all made their Championship coverage announcements within the past ten days or so, and Longford-Laois was the first game to receive the Newstalk treatment on Sunday afternoon.

Now it’s fair to say that the dramatic conclusion in Pearse Park gave Newstalk more ammunition than Galway-Roscommon offered to RTE.

The events at Hyde Park, which received the full live TV and radio treatment on RTE, turned out to be the deadest of all drowned squids, but still, there’s no denying that Newstalk have the RTE lads’ measure at the moment. Ger Canning is a tired voice on television these days so it’s no surprise that he should find the crossover to the even more exacting regime of radio difficult.

Compared with his output from Roscommon, the Newstalk team was a fountain of knowledge and wit and entertainment. It might seem obvious now, given that it’s been the way to go on American and Australian television for years, but the decision to go with a three-pronged approach to match commentary is a masterstroke. Dave McIntyre is excellent behind the mic and he’s joined by two loquacious and opinionated analysts in Down All-Ireland winner Conor Deegan and Mayo non-All-Ireland winner David Brady.

And it wasn’t even limited to their own unique blend of three-way action, because Ciaran “Murph” Murphy was also on hand, roaming the sideline to offer all the latest from both dugouts.

If doffing your hat and saying "Bravo, chaps" was something Irish people were apt to do, we’d do it. It isn't, so we won't.

But we will listen again.