I never want to see VAR brought into hurling

As the ever-increasing clamour for added technology in Gaelic games continues unabated, Limerick star Gearóid Hegarty is firmly against the introduction of a GAA version of VAR in hurling.

With controversial calls - missed or otherwise - making headlines in recent weeks in the both the men's and women's football championships, the dialogue around what can be done to aid referees has gained pace.

Could HawkEye be used to judge goal incidents in the same way it calls points, Tá nó Níl? Can a fourth official make a call on a possible square ball? And after that, who knows where it might end...

But hurling is more than alright as far as six-time All-Ireland champion Hegarty is concerned and any suggestion that the added use of technology would represent some kind of panacea for any and all of the game's shortcomings is not a belief shared by the Treaty colossus.

"I would hate to see something like VAR brought into hurling," Hegarty said this week as he collected his PWC GAA/GPA Player of the Month award for July.

"I find soccer nearly unwatchable these days - and I used to love watching it - but VAR has ruined it.

"If you compare even how we use HawkEye. You have one or two small stoppages - but imagine 15 or 20 of them in a game. It would ruin the flow of hurling."

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the past few weeks as the small-ball game finds itself in the unusual position of appearing to be the inferior on-field spectacle compared to it's big-ball brother, with football's renaissance continuing after two seasons of high-scoring games under the FRC's new enhancements.

But a raft of rule changes are not something Hegarty wants to see in his game. The game is not on life support and major surgery is not required just yet, the St Patrick's clubman insists.

"I don't know how we fix the issue of helping smaller counties compete, that's something that's above my pay grade. But we had a super Leinster championship this year, it's nearly as competitive as the Munster championship these days," Hegarty added.

"Hurling is great. There are things that could be better, yes. The new rules in football have been brilliant - and I love the football, always have - but I wouldn't like to see a large number of new rules brought into hurling. I don't think it's needed."

Rules discussions aside and now, with six Celtic Crosses tucked away and at 31 years of age, what keeps an amateur athlete going in pursuit of number seven - is enough ever enough?

"I suppose the easiest way to answer that question is it doesn't feel like we've won six All-Irelands," said Hegarty.

"I'm always asking myself, will I ever be satisfied? Because very quickly after the All-Ireland, I don't know what day it was, but I was only saying it to [my fiancée] Niamh 'will I ever be satisfied?'

"Because I was already starting to look forward to next year. In a way, I suppose that's a good thing. It has to be a good thing.

"I don't know. I'm not satisfied at the moment anyway, put it that way. That's the only way I can answer that question."

A lot has been made of the contribution of performance psychologist Caroline Currid in helping Limerick climb back to the top of the mountain after two seasons stuck at base camp.

It's rare enough these days to get through a press conference involving inter-county teams in any code at any level without hearing a reference to the great work the team's psychologist is doing. If there's one thing we know for sure about 'controllables', it's that they must be controlled.

The message always appears to be clear, concise and simple. Whatever can be done to weed out the negative thoughts and leave room for confident feels.

"I'm always wrestling with that, always, all my career," Hegarty explained. "I think everybody does, whether they're being honest about it or not, everybody has doubts, of course they do, it would be abnormal not to have doubts.

"I always have doubts. I had doubts after last year would we ever get back to Croke Park, just get back to Croke Park. Now, these would be fleeting moments, I'm not saying that I'd be riddled with doubt, but I have them.

"You'd have nerves before a game, you'd be doubting yourself, of course you would, but as I get a bit older you learn to not try to fight these off.

"I suppose curiosity is a big one for me as well in terms of being curious as to why you feel this way. You learn how to deal with these things, and that's what makes it all the more satisfying, I suppose, when you're sitting here today talking to you after winning another All-Ireland."

After a decade on the inter-county merry-go-round and now clearly one of the 'senior' men on the panel, Hegarty shows no signs of slowing down.

It may seem easy to keep going when you're contending for All-Irelands every year, but we've seen an incalculable number of cases in the past to assure us it's not always as simple as that.

Hegarty points to experience and an inquisitive mind that help keep the 2020 Hurler of the Year on the Liam MacCarthy treadmill.

"I'm on the panel since 2016, so 10 or 11 years. You pick up a lot of expertise over the years, you kind of figure out what to do and what not to do," he pointed out.

"I've relaxed a lot, that's probably the big one. I've tried to become a more patient person is a big one for me, because I suppose the world we live in nowadays everything is at the touch of a button and you can get everything so quickly.

"But if you want to achieve something so deeply and something that's so hard, you have to be patient. You have to wait. You have to keep putting in the work, you have to keep showing up, but you have to wait for it to happen. I'm not sure if that makes sense to you?

"I'm boiling that down to the smallest moments in game, I'm boiling that down into the week leading into the game, I'm boiling that down into the whole year. Patience is something that I've tried to work on a lot this year, I've just become a more patient person just in general, which is probably the one thing that I really went after this year.

"I always like to go after something, that's probably something that I went after this year. I can think of games, maybe the game in Ennis this year, I don't think I touched the ball for the first 10 or 15 minutes. Once upon a time when I was a bit younger I would have been panicking.

"But as you grow a little bit older, and, as I said, I've been working on becoming a more patient person, you realise that catastrophising or freaking out definitely won't help.

"You've just got to keep making the runs, keep looking for the ball, and eventually you work your way into the game. You learn these things as you get a bit more older, a bit more experienced.

"When you look back on your career, you wish that you knew these things when you were younger."

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