Return of Districts to Senior grades is worth considering

BRACE YOURSELVES everyone, because the annual race to the county championship titles is up and running. After three months of virtual inactivity when the inter-county scene took precedence, club players will be lucky to get a moment to themselves between now and late October, or even later more than likely in a lot of cases.

Each and every passing week will throw up various issues and controversies, and pride of place after the second round of hurling games must surely go to Oylegate-Glenbrien who really announced their arrival as a genuine team to be reckoned with thanks to a thrilling one-point win over Oulart-The Ballagh.

Our Senior hurling championship needs fresh sides with potential coming to the fore, and the boys in blue tick that particular box.

I was far removed from the top flight at the second of six games I covered over the weekend, when the St. Martin’s Juniors ran through Davidstown-Courtnacuddy for a short cut in Killurin.

And as I watched county forward David Dunne and his colleagues struggle from the off, I realised that he could potentially end up wearing the Wexford jersey for ten years or more but never actually play a game of Senior club hurling in his own county.

With all due respects to Davidstown-Courtnacuddy, it’s highly unlikely that they will ever get to that exalted level.

And Dunne isn’t alone, because Wexford team-mates such as Matthew O’Hanlon, Pádraig Foley, Aidan Nolan, Harry Kehoe and Shane Tomkins are also plying their trade outside the top flight at present.

Granted, some have already played Senior with their clubs and may do so again in the near future, but wouldn’t it be for the greater good if every hurler, and indeed footballer, had a chance to play at the highest level in any given year?

Indeed, the list of footballers affected is even longer, and includes the likes of Jim Rossiter, Donal Shanley, Paul Curtis, Tiarnan and Naomhan Rossiter, Robert Frayne, Conor Swaine, Shane Doyle, Martin O’Connor, Eoin Porter and David Shannon.

There is a solution, but is the will there to implement it? District teams were once a fabric of the local championship scene, and I’m old enough to just about remember the1983 campaign when Wexford District - winners of the title six years before - were pipped by one point by Starlights in the Senior football final.

The natural inclination is to dismiss the notion of bringing the Districts back as it would play havoc with fixtures. That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, though.

After all, it’s not unusual for Junior and Intermediate players in Cork and Kerry to play a club championship game on a Friday or Saturday and then line out with their division at Senior level some time from Sunday to Tuesday.

That’s the only way it would work in Wexford too and, while floodlights aren’t ideal for hurling, most players have performed under their glare by this stage and they would have to be used from September onwards.

This is what I’d like to see happening: teams one and two in the respective Senior groups still qualify for the quarter-finals, but the third- and fourth-placed finishers would face a preliminary knockout game against one of the Districts to determine the other four quarter-finalists.

The advantage would still lie with the clubs in that round, because it would naturally take a combination team some time to gel. We shouldn’t knock the idea, because it would give every player the chance to play Senior club hurling or football if he so desired.

Fix the games for the Monday or Tuesday of an existing club weekend, thereby ensuring that it would require just one extra round in both codes - for four preliminary quarter-finals apiece - to get the programme of games completed.

Young lads like Darren Byrne, Ian Carty, Stephen O’Gorman, Liam Stafford and Mikie Dwyer have been catching the eye with our promising Under-21 team. Imagine how their individual games would develop even more if we could expose them to Senior club hurling.

The solution is outlined above, but is the desire there to go for it? At least give it a chance. We need to be innovate in developing talent.