GAA Betting: Who Is Favourite To Win Hurler Of The Year?

Hurler Of The Year is a prestigious accolade and with the All-Ireland series firmly finished for this year, it’s worth investigating what betting sites are offering.

The three nominees have been named which are the Limerick trio of Aaron Gillane, Kyle Hayes & Diarmuid Byrnes as the excitement builds between now and November 17th, when the winner of the award in announced.

It is more or less a given is that the winner will come from the team that gets its hands on the Liam MacCarthy Cup, though Austin Gleeson and Brian Corcoran are two exceptions that come to mind.

So let’s see what the bookmakers are saying.

Gillane Now Unbackable

Aaron Gillane has been Limerick’s most consistent player this season and dragged the champions through on countless occasions when they were stuttering.

For that reason, he has topped the betting to be Hurler Of The Year. If he justifies those odds he will continue Patrickswell’s dominance of the award, his clubmates Cian Lynch and Diarmaid Byrnes taking the individual award in the last two seasons and Lynch also a winner in 2018.

The 4/6 on offer about him with bookmakers before the All-Ireland final is a distant memory now as bookies are offering a best-priced 1/4.

Interestingly, this has nothing to do with his performance as Limerick completed a four-in-a-row and annexed their fifth title in six seasons. 

He was largely neutralised, certainly relative to his high octane performances throughout the season, and had Kilkenny prevailed, Huw Lawlor would have catapulted into the reckoning as a result of doing such a good job on the powerful inside forward for the second year in a row.

They didn’t though, as John Kiely’s outfit blew them away in the second-half. For them to win, Eoin Cody probably needed to convert his couple of missed half-chances into goals, to go with the brilliant major he did score. And had THAT occurred, he would be a front runner.

But in the years when the champions didn’t provide the individual number one, that candidate (Brian Corcoran and Tony Browne for example) had phenomenal campaigns. Lawlor excelled throughout but just not sufficiently enough.

With Limerick’s other big guns having had largely inconsistent campaigns, Gillane looks a cert, having never been nominated for HOTY before.

Hayes and Byrnes Make Late Bid

Diarmaid Byrnes is the man in possession and his heroics in the final have given him a squeak of making history to be the first man to go back-to-back, Lynch, Brian Corcoran and DJ Carey others to have been named HOTY twice in non-consecutive years.

He would still have a way to go to match the achievements of Henry Shefflin however, who is a three-time HOTY with a decade spanning his first and last acknowledgements.

Byrnes is 20/1 with betting apps and that tells you that while he wasn’t poor and was the match-winner with 1-4 in a one-point victory over Cork in Munster

He didn’t dominate games this season in the fashion he had done last year, or indeed, managed in the second-half against Kilkenny when he plainly decided that enough was enough. 

The manner in which he commanded the air and the ground against the Cats was outstanding, while his shooting returned to the elite level it had been at heretofore and he finished top scorer with eight points, seven from frees, mostly long distance.

Kyle Hayes is the only legitimate rival to Gillane, having been slashed to 11/4 on GAA betting sites from 10/1. The galloping green giant has illustrated tremendous versatility over the years but after perhaps not being at his peak in 2022, he was one of Limerick’s consistent players this time around along with Daragh O’Donovan. 

I’m surprised to see O’Donovan slipping completely out of the reckoning after being 8/1 before the final and then having another very good outing against Kilkenny.

Hayes was very good too but he probably owes his relative proximity to Gillane at the top of the market to his selection by an RTÉ panel as their HOTY. It caught a lot of people by surprise and the layers responded.

And The Winner Is…

I can’t see a winning angle on this market at this juncture. It has to be Gillane. While he was quiet in the final, that is relative. 

He struck five points and two from play. It wasn’t like he had a wipeout and couldn’t hit a barn door.

Gillane finished the campaign with 3-47 at a scoring rate of eight points per game. 

His 1-11 against Clare in the Munster final Limerick won by a point and 2-6 against Galway in the All-Ireland semi-finals were sensational contributions but more than the quantity, there was the timing and importance of the goals especially. 

That applies too to the penalty he managed to win against Cork earlier in the Munster Championship, which was dispatched by Byrnes and led to another one-point triumph. He scored three points from play that day too.

Aaron Gillane looks nailed on to pick up the award for the first time in his career.

Clare Duo Top Young HOTY Market

The young HOTY market has a more open look to it compared to the senior equivalent, considering Gillane looks nailed on to bag that award.

The Clare duo of Mark Rodgers and Adam Hogan lead the way with new betting sites which is no surprise after Clare had another brilliant season despite not claiming any silverware.

The Banner topped Munster but came up just short against Limerick again in another epic Munster Final. 

Clare made short work of Carlow and Dublin in the knockout stages before once again finding Kilkenny too strong in the semi-final.

Both Rodgers and Hogan played a huge part for the Banner this season as they aim to become the first Clare man to win the young HOTY award since Tony Kelly in 2013. 

As for Cork's Ciaran Joyce, it would be somewhat of a surprise were he to land the spoils after Cork failed to progress out of the Munster Championship.