Time to bid farewell to the dual stars

Did you miss the death notice in your paper this week? If so, here it is again:

“PLAYER, Dual, 1884-2014 (peacefully after a long illness borne with fortitude). Beloved playing servant of both hurling and football at the highest level, sorely missed by all and no one at the same time, distantly related to Jimmy Barry, Ray Cummins, Liam Currams, Teddy Mc ... we will never see your likes again.”

That’s the short version. There was no big funeral and nobody turned up to raise a glass to poor auld Dualler. He didn’t so much die as fade away.

Fittingly, it was in Cork that the death cert was signed. Two names. Eoin Cadogan and Damian Cahalane announced they would be with one squad only for 2015: Cahalane joined the already departed Aiden Walsh with the hurlers, while Eoin Cadogan chose football. And that was it, really. Podge Collins and Lee Chin have long made their choice too. We move on.

This isn’t really a debate any more. While a couple of players, most notably Aiden Walsh in Cork, have stated that they came up with the one-code-only decision, there is no doubt that county managements are having their say too.

It’s fairly easy to see management’s side of the argument. A manager wants his best players and he wants them to himself, not shared with another squad, playing a totally different game, at the height of championship summer.

A manager wants his player at the same levels of preparation as the rest of his squad. He doesn’t want to be giving one player a jersey ahead of another who hasn’t missed one training session. A manager never wants his hurler/footballer to have spent the previous week fiddling around with a sliotar/football when he should be exclusive. He wants them at their best.

In Clare, we were first out of the blocks in dealing with the Podge Collins situation. The incredible tyro that is Podge starred for the footballers this year, although he had a quiet summer with the hurlers. He wasn’t alone in that as the rest of the defending All-Ireland champions had a tame enough championship, a natural consequence of 2013 and all those exertions. Not for a second did anyone blame Clare’s exit on Podge.

Cratloe are still going in both club championships and Podge will be playing a Munster club semi-final with the footballers this Sunday and a Munster club final with the hurlers the Sunday after. For those who think the dual thing can be done, 11 Cratloe players have the very same workload.

Club, however, is very different to county. Davy Fitzgerald and his management team took the view that Podge needs to be with the hurlers full-time next year and most managers feel the same way. Clare felt they had tried the dual Podge in 2014 and it didn’t work for them. Experiment over. Next year Clare mean business. No bringing the cup everywhere, no team holidays, no distractions.

This situation is clouded somewhat by the fact that the Clare football manager is Colm Collins, father of Podge (and brother Sean, also a dual performer). When forced with the decision to commit to the hurlers full-time or not at all, Podge went with football in 2015 and this caused reverberations around the county.

That was some weeks back and the world hasn’t ended. Podge goes to the big ball with heart and a half from the hurling side, but as a hurling All-Star and hurler of the year contender in the magical 2013, he will be missed.

Clare had their business out of the way back in September but it is only in the last few days that Cork’s dual player officially became extinct. Jimmy Barry Murphy will feel he got the better of the deal. Aiden Walsh and Damian Cahalane, two of his better players this summer, are staying with him and the hurlers, with Eoin Cadogan going back to football exclusively.

Wexford’s Lee Chin jumped off the football express to concentrate on hurling at the end of 2013.

The mini-resurgence of the dual player has been ended conclusively over the past few months and in truth there are not that many unhappy to see it. The GAA HQ and the GPA, apart from some rhetorical posturing, have done nothing to prolong his existence.

It is hard to blame the players because trying to play both codes is a headache for everyone, bar the poor dual player himself, whose biggest crime is his wish to play both hurling and football, our national games, for his county.

Last year there were constant complications for the few remaining dual stars, not least scheduling. In 2015, if any of the Rebels still wanted to try both codes, then they would have had decisions to make in March as both hurlers and footballers are down to play national league on the same weekend, twice. That is only one example and that is just March.

It’s best not to mourn for the Dualler because his time had past. Training twice a week for championship, taking the national league off and having a few pints up until August/September is no longer feasible. That was Jimmy Barry’s day, good as it was. (Are we any better off? Moot, because you cannot stop the tide.)

Mixing codes is not impossible if you were professional at both, if neither playing calendar interfered with each other and one wasn’t hurling and the other football. That’s probably the biggest problem: national games they might be, but they are worlds apart. A different skill set, a different ball and in today’s world a different type of body needed for each.

For those who would like to see a Lazarus, simply make the games pay for play, put on the football championship in the winter and hurling in the summer. Hell, Kilkenny might even play then as well. For now though all we can do is mark the passing of the Dualler. I’ll pay my respects at the funeral anyway, but in truth I didn’t know the deceased very well. Sure you’d never see him out. CL