When it comes to GAA punditry, there are three kinds of fools – the pundits themselves, the newspaper editors and TV producers who hire them and – above all – the people who read or listen to them…

It would be interesting to do an analysis of the accuracy of match forecasts made by the many pundits – both professional journalists and former players – in the national media. An Moltóir is not just referring here to the forecast results, but also to the prognostications about how games are likely to go and which players are likely to exert the main influences.

In professional sport, where there are regular weekly games and a line of form can be discerned, attempting to forecast results is a reasonable endeavour. However, long experience should show that it is foolhardy to attempt predictions about how hurling championship games will turn out – especially games involving the top eight or nine hurling counties. Despite the introduction of the qualifier system, there are enormous pressures on teams to deliver in these games, and all the science in the world will not help you predict how teams will react to this pressure on a given day.

One of the most fascinating things about sports psychology is the way a whole team seems to become enveloped by a particular mindset on a particular day. Thus, whereas the entire Waterford team was flying in the game in Thurles last week, Clare were collectively stuck to the ground. Another fascinating element involved here is the way there always seems to be one or two players who seem to escape when a negative mindset besets the rest of their team mates. Thus last week Colin Lynch (once he was moved away from the clutches of Ken McGrath) was operating on a different plane from the rest of the Clare team while the previous Sunday Dan Shanahan was on fire while his fellow players were a bunch of damp squibs.

Anthony Daly was at a complete loss when it came to explaining Clare’s no-show. He said that in the pre-game workout in Cashel, there was such a crispness about the drills that he was in no doubt but the Banner would come out on top against Waterford. If this is the case, then the question is, when and how did it all go wrong? Why should Seán McMahon, the top long-distance free taker in the game, get his radar so wrong that eventually he could not even lift the ball properly? Why should Davy Fitzgerald, one of the best placers of puckouts in hurling, start hitting balls out over the sideline?

An Moltóir can think of two possible explanations for the collective malaise that descends on teams in situations like this. One is the food the team consumed earlier in the day. There are lots of sports theorists nowadays who argue that a bad reaction of certain foods can produce under-performance among sports people. However, this normally is an individual thing, in that different people respond differently to different foods. The other explanation is the communication of negative vibes between players, whereby a feeling of anxiety on the part of a strong-willed player may be transmitted to another player beside him, setting off a chain reaction among the entire team. This is most likely to take effect in the confined space of the dressing room before a match, although it has also been suggested to An Moltóir that sometimes an event early in a game can have the effect of undermining the confidence of an entire team. Thus, the ease with which John Mullane skinned Brian O’Connell for Waterford’s first score could have spread fear among other Clare defenders who were already worried about how the inexperienced corner back would fare against one of Ireland’s most dangerous attackers. Or perhaps it was part of the Clare game plan to upset Mullane with some roughhouse tactics and they were thrown his reaction to the collective assault to which he was subjected early in the game.

Whatever the explanation, the point is that it is impossible to predict which team will be “up for it” on any particular day, with the result that pre-match punditry is largely a pointless exercise. Who could have predicted the way Clare blew Tipperary away in the first round of last year’s Munster championship, or the way they, in turn, were blown away by Waterford this year? Last year, Waterford and Limerick served up perhaps the game of the year in terms of free-flowing high-scoring hurling in their Munster semi-final clash. Yet, six days later the same two teams were involved in a dour dogfight of little skill and few scores. Who could have predicted either of these outcomes?

The only realistic approach one can take to analysing possible outcomes of big hurling games these days is to run the rule over the general level of performance of the teams involved in recent years. If both teams have been doing reasonably well, then all one can say is that either is capable of winning, if they strike form on the day. The almost unanimous verdict of the pundits that Clare would prevail over Waterford had no reasonable basis. Waterford were the Munster champions in 2002 and were beaten by Cork in a high-quality final in 2003. Their form in the league this year was better than Clare’s, and showed hints of a new level of steely determination to go with their obvious hurling talent.

In the bad old days of the troubles in the North, one heard a lot about the “politics of the last atrocity”. The hurling equivalent is the “punditry of the last performance”. In other words, the so-called experts are over-inclined to draw lines from one match to the next, which experience should show is the height of folly. Thus, after the way they demolished Tipperary last year, Clare were installed as clear favourites to oust Cork in the next round. But, of course, the Clare team which turned up to play the Rebels were mentally very different from that which blew Tipp away. Similarly, the Waterford team which was leaden-footed and couldn’t lift or hold a ball againt Galway looked like world beaters a week later.

And now the same pundits who were unanimous in favouring Clare to overcome Waterford have been busy over the last week writing about how this once-great Banner team have now come to the end of the line. This is more asinine codology. Here we have the same people who wrote Waterford off after one bad performance doing the same with Clare. Why would anyone take this kind of stuff seriously? One assumes that newspaper editors and TV producers encourage their pundits to be controversial and hyperbolic in their pronouncements. And presumably they do this because they know it will generate a reaction among readers and viewers. So the pundits walk away with fat pay cheques and the editors/producers bask in the glow of high readership or viewing figures. So the real fools are those who pay heed to the rubbish emanating from these people.

And that is where we came in…