The foot and mouth non-crisis has done a great service to the game of hurling...

It has meant that National Hurling League games which were originally scheduled to be played in the mud and sleet of February and March will now be played off in what are likely to be much more congenial April conditions. It has also forced the GAA into taking the revolutionary step of scheduling full rounds of both hurling and football leagues for the same weekends, which may be no bad thing in terms of encouraging more flexible thinking among the people in Croke Park responsible for fixtures.

At the same time, An Moltóir reckons that the reaction to the threat of foot and mouth disease in Ireland has been way over the top. It looks as though the government simply took out the files from the last threat in 1967 in order to find out what to do, not realising that the country has changed quite a lot since then. For a start, agriculture is much less important to the economy now than it was then, whereas tourism - whose viability is being threatened by the restrictions imposed as a result of the foot and mouth
threat - has become much more important. Furthermore, Ireland is now much more an urban society than it was in the late 1960s. There are hardly any farmers playing for county teams any more and few enough rural dwellers.

It seems strange to An Moltóir that, all over the country, club competitions were abandoned whereas pubs, discos and even churches which draw much bigger
gatherings than the average club game continued as usual, as did schools and colleges. It was a strange sight to see politicians and officials of every
hue in this country falling over themselves to express their commitment to the national interest, whereas in England, where foot and mouth is an unfortunate actuality, it was generally business as usual outside the rural districts affected by the disease.

What galls An Moltóir most of all is the equation of the farming interest with the national interest. If foot and mouth had caught on in Ireland, it
would largely have been due to dubious practices involving rogue animals which are widespread within both the farming community and the food processing industry. The Beef Tribunal provided any amount of evidence of this, but no serious official action to stem these practices ever materialised as a result. And even as this piece is being written, the farming organisations are resisting belated government proposals to tag all sheep so their movements can be traced. An Moltóir objects strongly to having his normal Sunday diversions disrupted in the interests of such people who will still receive state compensation for all destroyed animals, whereas hoteliers and coach operators whose livelihoods are undermined by the possible collapse of the tourism industry won't get a penny.

Having got that off his chest, An Moltóir notes that the last time there was a foot and mouth scare in Ireland, Waterford hurlers upset All-Ireland
champions Cork in the first round of the Munster championship. It is possible - indeed, likely - that these counties will meet again in this year's championship, so what are the odds of a repeat result? Back in 1967, Waterford's cause was helped in no small way by the sending off of the Cork fullback. What are the odds against this happening again, given that the man in possession of the number three jersey down by the Lee at the moment has been sailing a little close to the wind in recent times in terms of his treatment of opposing full forwards?