Swashbuckling giant Kyle Hayes divides opinion like no other GAA star

Irish Daily Mirror

07-06-2025

Of all the high-profile residents holding deeds to one of those prized condos on hurling's Main Street, none comes close to Kyle Hayes in their ability to ignite a wildfire.
On or off the pitch, Hayes is the preferred accelerant for social media arsonists seeking to set the online world ablaze.
Drop his name — his genius as a sportsman trailed by his deeply unsavoury past — into a conversation and, typically, it has the effect of a Molotov cocktail.
Neither the game's alley fighters nor its most dementedly combative figures, not even Ireland's dean of the perpetually highly-strung, the hyper-emotional Davy Fitzgerald, can set summer so instantly aflame as Limerick's skyscraping five-time Allstar.
That he was back in court less than 24 hours after last month's Man of the Match masterclass against today's Munster final opponents Cork reconfigured the entire All-Ireland debate, was a reminder of how the threads of his two lives have become so inextricably knotted.
And of how seeking to disentangle one from the other will remain an exercise in futility for as long as the Kildimo Pallaskenry leviathan remains a lead player on championship Broadway.
The swashbuckling giant who led the shattering undressing of the Rebels, whose blistering impact on the long days has exhausted the pundits' store of superlatives, co-habits with the author of an infinitely more sinister off-field backstory.
A five time All-Ireland winner; a young man who avoided jail after receiving a two-year suspended sentence on two counts of violent disorder inside and outside a nightclub in Limerick in 2019.
He was later ordered to do 180 hours community service.
Ironically, the more successful Hayes is at invading the vital moments in Limerick's mission to reclaim their status as the alpha males on the hurling landscape, the higher the volume is turned up on the chorus of outrage.
When he is awarded a Man of the Match or, as he was last season, an Allstar (the awards entirely justified by on-field displays, the lone criteria the judging panels are empowered to assess), the condemnation screeches to a deafening crescendo.
There are two constituencies feeding the frenzy.
The first and the loudest are the social media attack dogs who instantly scramble for the high moral ground every time a controversy arises, their arguments shrill and one-dimensional and lacking nuance or perspective.
But there are others, often compassionate, empathetic individuals, who are nonetheless alarmed that an individual found guilty of violent disorder, who has never expressed remorse and who received just 180 hours community service even after breaching the terms of his original sentence, retains a starring role in one of Ireland's most high-profile cultural celebrations.
Their reasoning is more subtle, more heartfelt and not so easily dismissed.
Some commentators in a counter-argument believe it irrational to hold athletes up as moral exemplars, that once the courts have spoken, life must go on. Even if it is an entirely logical assertion, it ignores the extreme emotions involved.
That Hayes is able to shut out all the white noise each time he plays, that he shows no sign of surrendering his place at the centre of the hurling world even while finding himself surrounded by such ceaseless tumult, is, of itself, quite remarkable.
At 6'5', his physique as muscular and streamlined and carrying the same sense of majesty as the thoroughbreds who will contest today's Epsom Derby, he is the Platonic ideal of an athlete so often imagined by ancient Greek sculptors.
He has maybe the greatest arsenal of gifts - the pulverising power and torque of an Airbus A330, an Apache helicopter's lift and nimble manoeuvrability, a B-52 bomber's deadly payload of obliterating missiles — of anybody who has played the game.
Cork, propelled into that recent round-robin tie on a tide of anticipation, departed less than two hours later nursing the kind of traumas that must have invaded their night time imaginings ever since.
With Hayes rampant, Limerick were again a force of invincible self-belief, a reborn team delivering perhaps the magnum opus of John Kiely's star-spangled reign.
In full flight and fizzing like a well-fletched arrow across a rectangle of grass, their number six offered a jolting reminder of why he rates among sport's most arresting and magnificent vistas.
Watching again the footage of his wonder goal against Tipp in the 2021 Munster final, different elements of his jinking, jaw-dropping solo gallop — a run at once thunderous and balletic — evoke Lamine Yamal, Rudolph Nureyev, Roger Federer, the Road Runner confounding Wile E Coyote, a Lamborghini Aventador and an 18-wheel juggernaut.
Tipp's defence appear as helpless as traffic cops trying to stop a runaway buffalo from breaking a red light.
The fever of excitement surrounding Hayes that afternoon, his capacity to deliver such irresistible moments, was a key component in Limerick's four-in-a-row champions announcing their separation from the rest of the field.
His success in combining demonic intensity with flourishes of artistic beauty in the most recent meeting with Cork — the player exhibiting what one Joe DiMaggio biographer describes as a 'glint of godhood' — strengthens the arguments of those who are happy to declare the 26-year-old the greatest hurler in the country.
He is unquestionably the most divisive.
If Hayes has one or two rivals for the title of Ireland's most influential hurler — led by his Limerick teammate, the lyrical master conductor Cian Lynch — he is unrivalled as the most contentious.
Ahead of tonight's rematch, there will be discussion of a sporting life bejewelled by achievement, a freakish talent who combines an engraver's touch with the kind of physical dimensions that might eclipse the sun.
As he swatted the Rebels aside 20 days ago, a rampaging Hayes had Dónal Óg Cusack flicking through the history books in search of a meaningful reference point.
'This Limerick team...have we ever seen a better team than them? What a machine they looked, so well engineered, resilient, strong, every part is working and up for the fight everywhere.'
Anthony Daly was just as effusive: 'Hayes is like a gazelle. It's not just his breaking out, it's the tackling, it's the handling at the last second, it's the whole package he gives you there at six.'
'Hayes is the leader of this Limerick team,' was the unequivocal verdict of Ger Loughnane's one-time sideline Sancho Panza, Tony Considine.
Many, horrified by the court case that put Hayes on the front pages, look at his story from a different angle, declining to see beyond the self-inflicted wounds of his past.
His suspended sentence on two charges of violent disorder inside and outside the Icon nightclub in 2019 — charges he denied at the 2023 trial — sits like an ugly, distinguishing visible-to-the-world birthmark.
The evidence heard in court was authentically shocking.
Many took issue with John Kiely's courthouse character reference, particularly the suggestion that Hayes 'accepts his part in that very disappointing night' and was 'very sorry'.
How could that be, how could he have accepted his part and be sorry, went the counter argument, when he had pleaded not guilty?
The feelings of his harshest critics are perhaps evoked in a memorable line from the political writer and former Clinton adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, in discussing Donald Trump's serial refusal to embrace the negative consequences of his actions.
'Trump's psychological equilibrium requires the constant rejection of his responsibility for the abrasive reality he churns up,' wrote Blumenthal.
Whether or not Hayes is entangled by his conscience or is armoured against self-examination only he can truly say.
What is certain is that he will race onto a Shannonside meadow this evening and the arena will rise to a fever pitch.
Some to acclaim a phenomenal player, one they believe has advanced into the territory of competitive excellence accessible only to the all time greats.
Others to toss their disgust like a Molotov cocktail onto the wildfire triggered every time Kyle Hayes steps onto one of summer's great stages.