A TALE OF TWO CHAMPIONSHIPS
The elite counties in Leinster and Munster have very different paths to negotiate before emerging for the All-Ireland series
DECLAN HANNON used a well-worn Irish phrase to sum up why the newly crowned Allianz Hurling League champions were under no illusions about the size of the task facing them as Limerick prepare to defend their All-Ireland crown.
‘A totally different kettle of fish,’ is how the Limerick captain described what’s ahead in the Munster round-robin.
If it hasn’t dawned on the county supporters yet, it will soon, because Limerick’s awkward Munster Championship schedule is the biggest reason why they might not actually get out of the province.
The vagaries of the provincial draw means that they are the only team to have a bye in the first round, meaning they will come in cold to their first game against reigning champions Cork at the Gaelic Grounds on May 19.
Not only that but with just the top three of the five Munster teams to stay in the All-Ireland race – the top two contest the provincial final – Limerick and Clare are the only two teams that will play three weekends in a row, on June 2, 9 and 16.
From the outside, the Munster and Leinster Championships look like a mirror image of each other. A top five of teams who play four matches – split evenly, home and away.
Except, closer inspection reveals some marked differences in the scheduling, differences which could well shape the provincial and AllIreland race.
Turns out, there are two different kettles on the go.
Last summer’s group stage revolution ushered in a brave new world where old-style knock-out was reduced to a version of history. The round robin played a big part in the greatest Championship ever witnessed, the game being elevated to new heights by the depth, quality and quantity of the games and the skillset of the players.
If this was hurling for the iPhone generation, turns out there was one design flaw: a condensed schedule that saw two unlucky teams in Munster and Leinster landed with having to play their entire fourmatch campaign in 21 days.
And guess what? In Munster, those two unlucky teams – Waterford and Tipperary – didn’t make it out of the group. In Leinster, Offaly – even with an extra day’s grace by virtue of a Saturday night start – were whitewashed. Wexford were the only team of the four who made it as far as the AllIreland series but they were eight points up in their fourth and final round match against Kilkenny at Nowlan Park before, as manager Davy Fitzgerald put it, hitting the wall in the second half. The GAA and the provincial councils took note and an extra week was added to the round-robin schedule for 2019, to prevent a similar scenario happening again. And so both the Munster and Leinster Championships will start on the weekend of May 11/12 and finish on June 15/16, five weeks later.
Except, in true GAA fashion, the different independent provincial councils have taken two different approaches to running identical competitions.
Leinster went for the option of staggering the two round-three fixtures across separate weekends, which means that no county has to play three weekends in a row.
That’s in marked contrast to Munster where the reigning League and All-Ireland champions have the handicap of having to do just that. So too, Clare, who reached last year’s All-Ireland semi-final.
Munster GAA communications manager Ed Donnelly explains the rationale, and why Leinster had a different kind of choice to make. ‘If you look at the Leinster model, I believe Wexford have two away games to start, somebody [Galway] has two away games to finish. So they moved the schedule. In Munster, it’s home, away, home, away.
‘The same format as Leinster was discussed but the feeling amongst Munster counties was that no county wanted to start with two away games, to leave it as is. Yes, that means two teams play three weekends in a row but that was deemed a better option for the Munster counties than two away games in a row.’
With Munster so finely calibrated, the statistics around away games fed into that thinking. Only one team won a proper ‘away’ fixture in last year’s round-robin, and Clare’s victory over Tipperary could easily have gone the other way if Jake Morris’ goal attempt hadn’t hit the post late on.
‘The bigger issue in Munster was around home and away. And it was a width of a post that played a part in that Clare result. It was unfortunate for Waterford that Walsh Park was not available. The stadium will have a reduced capacity this year, 11,000, but they are hitting the ground with the same playing field as everybody else,’ adds Donnelly.
The primacy of the Munster Championship was evident in the live television scheduling. Seven of the 10 round-robin fixtures were covered, six by RTÉ and the Saturday night game between Cork and Limerick by Sky Sports. That overall figure is expected to rise when the official television schedule is announced with Sky Sports again expected to pick up the sole Saturday-night game between Cork and Waterford at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on June 8.
In Leinster, three games are fixed for Saturday nights: the first match between Kilkenny and Dublin at Nowlan Park, and Wexford’s final two rounds, at home to Carlow and then Kilkenny.
Fitzgerald’s Wexford have the toughest start of any team in either province, falling into the bracket of having to play their first two games away from home. And what a challenge they are too. First up is a trip to Parnell Park to face Dublin before a trip to Pearse Stadium to take on Leinster champions and AllIreland finalists Galway.
The flipside of the draw is that Galway have the toughest finish to their provincial campaign, rounding things off with an away trip to Nowlan Park to play Kilkenny and then Parnell Park to face Dublin.
So, the summer presents a tale of two Championships, and two different kettles of fish.
‘HURLING FOR THE IPHONE GENERATION HAD A DESIGN FLAW’