MICHAEL DUIGNAN: HURLING’S SUPER 2
Never mind ‘Super 8’...hurling has been whittled down to ‘Super 2’
WITH so much debate since last weekend over the ‘Super 8’ and where hurling will fit into the new landscape, I took the time to do a little bit of research. I went back through the record books over the past 60 years and looked at the identity of the All-Ireland hurling champions in three 20-year slots: from 1956-75, from 1976-95, and from 1996-2015.
In the first period, six different counties won the All-Ireland. Over the next 20 years, that figure was seven. In that final bloc of 20 years, it was six again
So you can argue that the big picture with hurling is roughly the same as it ever was.
In the history of the GAA, hurling has had a limited number of counties capable of lifting the Liam MacCarthy Cup. A limited number of counties who play the game to the highest level.
If football is gearing up for a ‘Super 8’, well, the records show that we have effectively had a ‘Super 6’ in hurling for a long, long time.
When you look closer though, a worrying pattern emerges. Nine different counties have claimed the top prize over that 60-year period.
But a closer look at six of those is troubling. Waterford is one of those counties – but you have to go all the way back to 1959 for the last success. Limerick is another – a county whose last success was way back in 1973.
Galway fit into the middle period – a county that hasn’t won since 1988. Wexford and Offaly are billeted in the last period, the last All-Ireland triumphs dating back to 1996 and ’98 respectively.
Even look at Cork – it’s 11 years since one of the game’s traditional elite lifted the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
That only leaves Kilkenny, Tipperary and Clare.
And the numbers shrink again when you look at what happened after 2005 when, apart from Clare’s 2013 title, September has belonged to either Kilkenny or Tipperary. That tells a story. One that makes scary reading. Hurling has been dominated by a small number of teams but a lot of counties who were at the top have gone way back.
You can say all you want about plenty of counties being competitive – but the reality lies with how many have won All-Irelands.
Are the likes of Wexford, Cork, Limerick or Galway any closer to ending those barren runs? Probably not.
Then you take Congress and the way it pushed hurling way into the background by green lighting a plan for football reform in isolation. It means from 2018, July and August will feature 19 Football Championship matches with just five in hurling. Now 19 games of handpassing might just bore you to death.
Hurling needs more promotion to stay strong in the counties that even have a record of winning.
We have to protect those nine counties who have won in that 60-year period before widening the net even further. We have to be careful that hurling doesn’t slip down the pecking order.
The game has a huge profile now. In fact, it has never been as high.
But now football is going to take over the television schedules.
And that is going to have an impact. In Dublin, you can see it with the number of top class dual players who have chosen football. Dublin could have made a serious breakthrough in hurling in recent years but it didn’t have all the players available.
I’m not here to bash anybody but the profile of delegates attending Congress is often totally detached from the modern game.
The GAA will argue that it’s democracy at work, that it’s made up of delegates from all the county boards. Yet you’re picking from a small number of elected people who want to attend committee meetings. Often, they’re not the right people needed to make decisions, or they’re unaware of the prevailing mood among players.
Going to Congress, the big weakness is that so many follow the leader. There is nearly a fear of going against the grain.
How many counties asked their club or county players for a mandate? It was a case of going up to Dublin and following what the boss man says. That’s not strong, independent leadership – which is what counties and clubs need right now.
The new football format runs to 2020. In the meantime, another generation, whether taking up or sticking with hurling, could be lost in the face of so much competition from other sports.
Congress is dysfunctional. You have so many football-based counties – say Leitrim, Sligo, or Donegal just for example – making decisions on hurling when they don’t care about it in their own counties.
Commercialism has taken over. The GAA is doing very well in one area – making money. Director general Páraic Duffy is doing a fantastic job in that respect.
This money goes back to the clubs and counties but to the detriment of what? The fabric of our association? The first thing I would do is create a master fixture list – that caters for hurling as well as football. And the club player.
Otherwise, the long barren spell without success for the limited number of counties with a chance of lifting the Liam MacCarthy Cup will only lengthen.
Limerick last tasted All-Ireland glory way back in 1973