{"id":406,"date":"2009-10-20T08:25:07","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T07:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/?p=406"},"modified":"2009-10-23T10:12:20","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T09:12:20","slug":"hurling-books-all-arriving-on-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Hurling Books all Arriving on Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

No sooner hav<\/span>e th<\/span>e last hurling balls<\/strong> b<\/span>e<\/span>en puck<\/span>ed than the hurling books<\/strong> begin to fly through the air.<\/p>\n

This year is a bumper harvest, no doubt. Cork hurler \"donalogcusack1\"<\/a>Donal Og Cusack<\/strong>‘s book is certainly the pick of the crop in terms of generating excitement<\/strong>.\u00a0 His book is due to feature a number of revelations about his personal life and his views on professionalism<\/strong> in the game that will cause much heated debate in the months to come.<\/p>\n

All of this is a far cry from the attitude of players in the 1950s<\/strong>. In those days, players simply played to the best of their abilities and did what they were told.\u00a0 If they got the opportunity to play for their county, then they humbly accepted<\/strong> and were honoured to do so. Their personal lives <\/strong>were nobody’s business<\/strong> but their own and the idea of taking payment<\/strong> for doing what they loved to do – particularly for their own native county – was simply not within the realm of possibility<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As the organisation has developed over the years, so too have the revenues. Expectations<\/strong> from players have been raised<\/strong> accordingly.\u00a0 Many would say that those expectations are too high<\/strong>, but it must be remembered that demands<\/strong> on players are not the same as they were 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

In the 1959 championship<\/strong>, for example, Waterford <\/strong>came through their provincial games unbeaten. There was no need for any “back door” re-test.\u00a0 Galway<\/strong> were actually playing in the Munster<\/strong> championship at the time (with very little success), so winning the Munster title put them straight into the final.<\/p>\n

Games<\/strong> were a whole 10 minutes shorter<\/strong> and, even with the necessity of a replayed All-Ireland final against Kilkenny, Waterford had a minimum rest-up period between games of 4 weeks<\/strong>.\u00a0 Going into the the replay against the Cats on October 4th 1959<\/strong>, Waterford were the favourites (God be with the days!), yet one of the chief concerns amongst newspapers at the time was that the Waterford players<\/strong> might suffer from “burn-ou<\/strong>t” after such a “long campaign”!<\/p>\n

\"Front<\/a>\u201cMy Father: A Hurling Revolutionary, the life and times of Ned Power<\/strong>\u201d is out on paperback at the end of November 2009.\u00a0 Click here<\/a> for further information, pre-order<\/strong><\/a> and excerpt.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No sooner have the last hurling balls been pucked than the hurling books begin to fly through the air. This year is a bumper harvest, no doubt. Cork hurler Donal Og Cusack‘s book is certainly the pick of the crop … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9kxa7-6y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}