The Hurling Pod
THE HURLING POD: Cork Progress From Munster | Offaly Hold The Cats | Dublin Rally Past Wexford
10 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Football on Off the Ball. He played down a mill wall a couple of times in the den. That was at a time when Danny Shidto was the captain of mill wall and he used to stand at the front of the tunnel with no top on and bark like a dog. Honestly, we can laugh now because it is a bit funny but it's the most intimidating thing I've ever seen in my life.
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Welcome 1-0. Skell put this very nicely when we were in the green room just before we started this. He went, all three of our respective counties are playing at the weekend, none of them lost, and yet none of us are coming out the weekend feeling happy, which I think is a really good way of assessing the weekend that just has been. So what happened in the championships?
We won a game in Munster again, proved to be a very important one though. Cork have qualified for the Munster-Irling Championship, not in the final just yet, which they were saying on GA Plus last night. But Brian Hayes with seven points. They edged out Watford in the end.
The reigning champions on the cusp of a return to the final, but mathematically not quite there yet because three teams could finish on six. Peter Quealy, very unhappy with the two black cards that Watford received during the game. We'll talk about both of them. It also looks, unfortunately, like Stephen Bennett's summer is over.
He had a hamstring injury and then he hurt his knee and had to come off. Looked in quite a bit of distress when he was coming off as well. And it looks like the day shares staring down the barrel of another early exit from the championship again. Dublin, taking a big step towards qualification. Leinster, they went away from home against Wexford yesterday.
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Chapter 2: What were the key moments in the Munster Championship games?
So, yeah, he probably had the bigger Tesco in Dublin, probably provided more of my waddy. Yeah, football and Tesco. Don't come near us in Kilkenny.
yeah um lots of options i have not been just yet and i did buy some knock off my waddy yesterday which i feel bad about i bought the uh cheaper my waddy from leadle which is the other squirty one that you get at the tail oh no you can't be that there does job i had some at lunchtime but i will go back to the real deal very very soon and particularly if my waddy decide that they're going to sponsor us i'm all over that that's like buying fucking vegan meat
It just says the same thing, but it's not.
I'm sorry. It was an impulsive buy, all right? Some of us don't have the funding to purchase two swing sets at the one time. So we decided, you know what? I'm going to very cheaply buy this. I don't think Sophie's bets quite came in from last weekend.
There was a wonderful Simpsons meme which was sent to us, which was Lisa and Homer when they go on the wonderful run on Daddy Daughter Day when they're betting on American football. That could well be scaled to fund the rest of his garden equipment run. But yeah, Sophie's choices didn't do brilliantly. But then again, none of us had a 100% record.
None of us were predicting there was going to be a draw between Offaly and Kilkenny this weekend. I think the rest of the games were very, very predictable, even though they didn't play out maybe as we expected. I do want to get Murph's thoughts on this before we dig into the games themselves. Because this was, for me, the highlight of the Cork against Waterford game.
And it came from his club mate, Richie Hogan. Have a look.
By God, you're not going to win it either as a fullback or... Look at that, Richie. Whoa, I hope we got that. Please tell us we got that. Richie saw that moment coming. I was like, whoa. I need to check which one of the cock boys tried to take out Richie. Don't worry. We shouldn't have bothered with the demo at all. I hope you got that, lads.
Poor old Cadogan there, nearly taken out by one of his former Cork teammates, possibly, because it came from the Cork side of the warm-up that came across. But Richie Hogan, what a paw. And what I didn't notice until I saw a different angle of it later, he actually had the folded-up match program in his hand. So obviously he dropped it just in time, stuck the paw up, and straight out of the air.
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Chapter 3: How did Offaly perform against Kilkenny?
And he said the comment on Off the Ball, is this another Paul Murphy story? Basically meaning, is it a lie like? So the idea that I've come on here and said that was class, it hurts me a little bit. But Richie listens, so he's heard all this at some stage during the week.
Indeed. How do you rate the catch before we get into the games there, Scully? I'd say it was a hand pass.
It was set up. You want to be catching those. Head height, wasn't travelling, wasn't travelling. If you catch that in your bad hand, which that was for Richie, it wasn't travelling that fast. It was coming slow, fair enough. Yeah, yeah. If you have time to drop a programme and catch it, I mean, sure. Yeah, it was definitely a hand pass from one of the producers. Yeah, absolutely.
Fair point there, a crack of the ash.
Show me a ball there, show me a ball there, Chris.
My next Twitter handle will definitely be Ufali back. That a fact. That a fact. Yeah, footballers won yesterday as well. Skel, keep your ears away there for one second. But yeah, a good weekend, I would say. They beat Clare, wasn't it? They beat Clare, which I was not expecting. Down in Ennis as well. So they go in the winner's draw for tomorrow. Jen wondering, is this live?
You best believe, Jenny, we are live right now.
What do you need us to prove, Jenny? What do you need us to prove that it's live? Put up the latest newspaper, is it?
Yeah, yeah. Very long one here from Barbara, but let's kick things off about what happened to Waterford at the weekend. The whole screen is taken up by this. But this is the joy of Facebook where you can leave quite a lengthy message. Lads, our Waterford's unlucky, losing three lads to injury in the first half, particularly Bennet, who's probably the best player this year in Ireland.
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Chapter 4: What insights are shared about Cork's performance?
And things were moving in the right direction. I do agree that the black cards came at a very bad time. And even when Billy Nolan saved the first penalty, which is a great save, by the way, and got it down the field, it was crying out for a score. If you got that score, you might be able to create a little bit of separation and get the crowd up with you for another bit.
It didn't materialise, but that's fine. The second half in, the second black card was an absolute killer. But that was thrown at them in the game because the foul was committed. And I hate to say it, but it was a black card A, it was a penalty B, and Billy Nolan couldn't get to it. And that created a bit of separation.
And then when you're down, you know, I was going to say 10 men, when you're down to 14 against Cork and they have the breeze, it's always going to be a very tricky proposition, especially when you don't have your full complement of players. But I was thinking about this all day, Will, with regards to the Championship.
And I know, because you and yourself know, with the way the Galway-Kildare game went, and the whites from Dublin, and even the Saturday game last night, we were saying the games weren't of great quality. But, like, what can we do?
Do you know what I mean?
I feel like we're going to have this conversation every year. Morph mentioned it, actually, a couple of weeks ago. This is the... It's the... For every year, we have this conversation about the structure of the Championship, about the fourth team in Munster, about how such a dog... a dog fighting a bear pit. These are the cars we're dealt with. I'm sorry. What can we do?
It puts, I suppose, unnecessary commentary towards the likes of us, the Leinster personnel, if you want to call it, because we can't do a lot about it, to be fair.
I'm just going to stop you there for one second. I'm glad that as a Galway person, you have now embraced the fact that you are now part of the Leinster Championship and you're a Leinster man.
You fucking said that, didn't I? You did.
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Chapter 5: What insights are shared about Wexford's performance?
They had like nine points from play in the whole game. So yes, the dependency on the times and he's produced magic. There has to be more than that. And they're Mr. Cup players. I get that. You know what I mean? It's just that, like... I don't see the rejuvenation from Wexford's minor team up to the senior team over the last five or six years.
Chapter 6: How have younger players impacted team performance?
I made note of this a couple of weeks ago. We can pinpoint team success and increased performance to the, I would say, rejuvenation of senior panels by younger members. I can go back to the Cork team at the moment. They won the Ireland when they bet you're off when you're under 20.
you know the Galway team at the moment although they have won a minor in 20 years they're being backbone now you can see in the forward unit by under 20s current from 20s and last year 20s the same with Chipperary last year well documented about Sam O'Farrell and Darren McCarthy etc I think before anyone thinks for shitting on Waterford they've got a really good group of young players which are coming through at the moment as well which you'd hope to see them transfer into the senior grade as soon as they're out of the leisure but where the team stands right now it's just reality that they don't have that high level quality that can knock off the teams like Dublin
or Kilkenny or Galway, at the moment, right? And that's why I was so surprised to hear the stats. But then, surprised in one arm, but it's actually, it's reality in another. They haven't beaten Dublin in eight years, but home or away. You know, so it's not as if that this has been a major surprise waiting to happen. This has been a regular occurrence, to be fair. And Wexford didn't expect that.
They can have the ability, the time to get up for Kilkenny when they play them at home. But just, that's more of an emotional approach as opposed to a tactical one. So, where they go from here, it's very hard to tell, like, And I can see people, I was watching on Twitter yesterday, that were calling Nelly for Rossiter's, you know, sacking or resignation, whatever you want to call it.
I don't think that's fair. That's not fair if you ask me. Because you can't put it down to him. If he had a supreme group of players at his disposal, and he was managing them, let's say, in an ill manner, that it was part of the downfall, I'd say something. But in this instance, I don't believe so.
And Webster people, if you're watching, feel free to come at me here and challenge what you may feel internally. But just from the outset, yesterday was my one, two, three, four, fifth time to watch Webster this year. Fifth time. And I can say hand in heart, I haven't been impressed at any point in time. And I'm not talking about the hurling application.
It's just the general performances that they're producing are not at the level required to compete at the top level.
So
Like, that's why I said to you from the outset, like, the Awfully Wexford game. I know you were on about Awfully Kildare at the start of the year before the championship. Awfully Wexford. You're after going to Dublin, or you're after inviting Dublin and inviting Kinney.
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Chapter 7: What are the expectations for Offaly's upcoming match?
You didn't lose either. Like, I mean, come on. Like, this is... As the lad says, it's on. It's on if you want it to be on. It's just...
heavy to believe to do so and like Wexford are in a tough position now because as I said yesterday or earlier Dublin approached the game you could see that they were confident in their approach and very defensively aggressive you know what I mean whereas Dublin or Wexford I didn't feel it well you know you couldn't feel that kind of confidence they looked very reactive every time I thought Chin got the ball that bodies around him they just didn't know where to turn you know there was no set plan of where he would
a ball go backwards or laterally. It just came across very, not very individualistic, but just very reactive that they were trying to, you know, I suppose, pull this from, put up their socks as an individual as opposed to a group.
Do you get me? And that lack of fluency wasn't there in the Kilkenny game as well. I know we were very, very strong in the Maftical-Kenny game and I thought...
issues defensively that day but everything was so scattered and individualistic in its approach that day as well there was no real kind of flow to the way they moved the ball between the lines or anything like that no watch them go and play brilliantly in six days time until the more but i like all past evidences that might not happen though but again my brother-in-law asked me today he said do you think the previous management wore them out
I can't blame Davey for this.
I don't think so to be honest.
For me it's too long ago and also Rosser surely has a good handle on who's coming through and who's not coming through given he was managing these lads underage before he went to the senior team.
My response was, I don't buy excuses. They are where they are, to be honest. If they're standing as a 15 looking across the pitch to Kilkenny or Galway, and you say, are we as good as them? I don't think they are, to be honest. And they can't say it themselves. But come here, it doesn't stop them applying their best effort.
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Chapter 8: What predictions are made for the upcoming hurling games?
I think Wexford fans feel the same. To Will Norris' point there, Conor McDonald's opted out for the year, I believe, and where is Rory? Well, Rory O'Connor's gone to Australia, so Amy Gavin-Mangan, his partner, is playing AFL. So I think he was going to go last year, then he held off until the end of the championship last season, but he's gone for the calendar year.
Is Conor McDonald in the country?
I don't know. I don't know.
I think he's doing a bit of... Well, I think he's doing punditry. Is he still doing the podcast? Is it Talk Sports with Bubbles? I've seen him there. That's where I've seen him anyway. Sorry? He just opted out. No injuries, just opted out. Yeah, he just must have opted out. He might be injured. I'm not sure. I really haven't a clue to be honest.
Yeah, no, I think he just took the year. I think he's taken the year out. I don't think he's formally retired, but he's not playing.
Sorry, Murph, because you're a dog outside the country, I just know everything. Thanks, man. South Wicklow, Wexford, Carlock and Kenny, Leash.
Our South East correspondent kicks in. Rush Ladd, which is Rush spelled differently, of course, the area of Rotherton Leam Rush. Dublin's defence looks a lot better with Rush at six. We did wonder about this, Murph, where he was going to play. Was he going to be an auxiliary attacker? Was he going to play a full forward line?
You know, you're kind of waiting to see how much match time he's going to get and then boom. I know Chloe O'Connor put it at the very start as well. Maybe this was the plan that Neil O'Callaghan had all the way through is to get Rush back in to do a very specific job with Mark and Lee Chin. It's an interesting one. I mean, it adds a little bit extra to it.
Then obviously it opens up where you put Chris Crummey as well. There's all sorts of little domino effects to this. But does Liam Rush now become their starting six for the rest of the championship?
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