Preliminary quarter-finals in All-Ireland SHC retained
THE link between the Joe McDonagh Cup and the Liam MacCarthy Cup will remain after delegates at yesterday’s Special Congress in Croke Park voted to retain the All-Ireland SHC preliminary quarter-finals.
Delegates voted 51 per cent in favour of retaining the current structure – a surprise move, given that the GAA’s Central Council had backed the proposal to prevent the McDonagh Cup finalists from playing in the last eight of the All-Ireland series against the third-placed teams in Munster and Leinster.
Given that a 60 per cent majority was needed to jettison the preliminary quarter-finals, the proposal was defeated quite comfortably. Delegates heeded those who wanted the format to retain, including Westmeath chairman Frank Mescall, who argued that the key to promoting hurling in secondtier counties was keeping a door open that would see top-level teams having to travel to venues like Mullingar’s Cusack Park.
The GAA’s failed bid to remove the preliminary quarter-final came against the backdrop of complaints that the McDonagh Cup competition had become too condensed, as the final had to be completed in time for the start of the knockout phase of the All-Ireland series.
This year, Offaly had just three free match-day weekends out of 15, between the start of the Allianz League and McDonagh Cup semifinal.
And the Faithful County’s 32-point defeat to Tipperary in their subsequent preliminary All-Ireland quarter-final clash cast a further critical spotlight on the sustainability of the link, given that the average margin of defeat for McDonagh Cup teams has been running at 15 points a game since the format was introduced in 2018.
As a result of the motion failing, a subsequent proposal was withdrawn that would have seen the introduction of a McDonagh Cup semi-final round with the second and third-placed teams playing off against each other.
Otherwise, yesterday’s Congress proceeded as had been anticipated, with the remaining nine motions on the agenda all comfortably passed.
Of those, the most consequential was the commitment to increase female representation on the GAA’s powerful management committee to 40 per cent.
It represents a radical overhaul of the gender balance in the GAA’s leadership, as currently just three of the management committee’s 19 members are female
The move to increase female representation was largely informed
by a Government directive that the governing bodies of all national sporting organisations commit to meeting that 40 per cent mark.
In passing yesterday’s proposal, with a majority vote of 79 per cent, a three-stage process has now been set in place and will see the GAA’s management committee expand in size to 21 members next year, with nine of them women.
Despite the comfortable margin by which it was carried, those who opposed it seem to be of the view that the GAA, already in the midst of an integration process with the LGFA and Camogie Association, had been ‘forced’ into doing so, amid fears that State funding could have been jeopardised.
GAA director general Tom Ryan, in explaining the motion, admitted that he could understand why some people held that view, and conceded that the proposal would not have made it to Congress but for the directive.
He advised delegates that the association was ‘under pressure’ to deliver on it.
‘It’s a decision the GAA has to make on its merits and everything we do is watched and subject to comment and commentary,’ explained Ryan in a post-Congress briefing.
Of the other motions passed, the most significant is a reform of the All-Ireland MFC which will see all teams play in a tiered, knockout All-Ireland series.
It was also agreed that Galway and Ulster teams would compete in the Leinster MHC, while the third and fourth-placed teams in the Leinster and Munster minor championships will qualify to play in a new preliminary quarter-final round in the All-Ireland series.
Congress also passed a motion that will see the senior All-Ireland finals played by the 30th Sunday of the calendar, after the GAA was forced to deviate from rule for the past two summers to move it a week from the 29th Sunday, as the old rule had stated.