THE LAST POINT: Super Sunday delivers few thrills and no spills
THE LAST POINT
Maybe it is our fault! Perhaps, just perhaps, we built last Sunday’s sporting extravaganza up as some sort of mythic event; a cross between the awe-inspiring majesty of a Muhammad Ali title fight in the 70s that routinely stopped the world in its tracks mingled with the nostalgia that comes from the crackling pictures that lingers in our memories from Mexico 1970 or even the images wrought by RTE’s wondrous wordsmiths, the two Michaels – O’Hehir and O Muircheartaigh - on All-Ireland Final day.
Fair to say that last Sunday’s All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final between Limerick & Galway and the World Cup Final in New York, a match many would have said was made in heaven when Spain lined up to face Argentina, turned into something of a damp squib, a hard watching on both counts and two games that likely won’t make any top ten lists, unless you hail from Limerick or Espana!
Maybe the anticipation caused an overload of expectation – Galway’s young tyros were going to tear into Limerick and make this a contest for the ages while the meeting of a Messi led Argentina and a superb Spanish side had all the makings of an all-time classic. Instead, both games evoke memories of darker days, the game in New York harkened back to the boring, awful 1990 Final and Limerick’s destruction of the Tribe summoned up images of Kilkenny running amok against Waterford.
Sad to say but watching both games, I spent a lot of time scrolling on my phone and even flicking channels. The Treaty men turned the Hurling decider into a procession long before the final whistle eventually put Galway out of their misery – Galway’s youth and inexperience probably caught up to them but, in all fairness, the hurling season was somewhat underwhelming in 2026.
Sunday evening was no better – I’m a self-confessed Messi fanatic, no question he is the greatest of the last 25 years and maybe even the best ever, but Spain apparently stumbled on the revolutionary tactic of simply not letting the wee magician get near the ball and the few times he did, the players of La Roja surrounded him with a speed and intensity that mirrored what Limerick’s players did to Galway in Croker earlier in the day.
Spain’s only failing on the day was they didn’t finish the game off much earlier than they did – with the way Argentina set up, one goal was bound to be enough but for all their many talents, an out and out striker in the mould of Haaland, Bellingham or Mbappé is the one thing they lack. But what they are is a team in every sense – a collective of outstanding talents who are willing to subsume their individual egos for the greater glory and that may be the greatest lesson of the 2026 World Cup Final.
I’m sure the good folk of Limerick and Spain aren’t bothered one little bit by the lack of entertainment from both contests and, if we’re honest, were Leitrim to win the Nestor Cup in the dullest, lowing scoring match you could possibly imagine, nobody from Leitrim would care one little bit. But, for the sheer magnitude of both games and how these occasions have become communal and inspiring centre-pieces of our lives, last Sunday’s Super Sunday was a bit of a damp squib!
REFEREEING LIES IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER!
Leaving a few games over the past weekend, I could help but wonder ‘who’d be a referee’ and, if you’re a regular reader of this column, you know it is a question I’ve asked a few times in the past. Incredibly, I had fans of both teams asserting quite stridently that the man in the middle had done their level best to ‘do’ their team – so maybe in some weird way, the referee must have done something right.
I’m not going to proclaim myself as some sort of Yoda figure, all Buddhist serenity and understanding – had I written this column immediately after the Dubs lost to Kerry in the All-Ireland Semi-Final, safe to say I’d have been spitting fire and maybe even landed the Observer with a defamation action or two! Time has seen the anger fade, even if the annoyance hasn’t, but if Brendan Cawley and his umpiring team, with resources that a lad in the middle of a park in Leitrim can only dream about, can make game defining errors, what chance do our local whistle blowers have?
We all have our biases built into how we view a match – I couldn’t understand how Ross McGarry’s goal wasn’t awarded or how Cawley deemed Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne’s challenge a penalty but, as the days pass, I realise neither decision was as clear cut as I’d initially thought. But, for the life of me, I can’t understand how the square ball goal wasn’t even looked at. The men in the middle have had a rough time of it this inter-county season and again, these are the best of the best in the refereeing world so again, what hope does a local referee on the fields of Leitrim have.
Just as players make mistake, so do referees as indeed do reporters and just about everyone in all walks of life – I was at the Reserve Division 1 Final last Sunday where the referee had a different score to what I had in my notebook at the end of normal time; one official had the same score I did but another person on the sidelines had the same tally as the referee so where do you go from there? I might be wrong, I don’t believe I was but I believe Mohill are launching an appeal over the result, citing video evidence, so who knows what is going to happen.
What I know for a fact is that referees don’t go out to screw over teams (at least I hope not) or make mistakes and maybe we should cut them a bit of slack. We all want correct decisions from a match official 100% of the time, that is the standard we demand but that is simply not realistic and would you rather VAR or Artificial Intelligence making real-time game decisions?
Refereeing definitely lies in the eye of the beholder – we all know that, even wallow in it, but the poor auld man in the middle is the only one not allowed to get it wrong. In a perfect world, mistakes wouldn’t happen but we don’t live in a perfect world!