Ailing and failing fast

this Munster Final. All things considered there isn’t a whole lot between Cork, Tipperary and Clare right now and all three and light-years behind Kerry - with that chasm only set to grow wider over the next few years. It all leads one to believe that the Munster Championship is badly broken and dying on its feet, and that something really needs to be done about it sooner rather than later.

It might be easy to forget that in the 24 hours before Kerry demolished the Cork seniors by 17 points in the senior final, the Kerry minors won the Munster title after beating Clare by 20 points in the final, and the Kingdom’s U-20 team accounted for Waterford the evening before by 30 points in the provincial semi-final. Of course it’s easy to take a few one-sided results in isolation and jump to knee-jerk conclusions, while it’s also easy to ask ‘what can be done’ before falling back into the old routine in the hope that the system repairs itself. But the provincial championship in Munster is crumbling and something really should be done about it.

And if you want to argue that Kerry, through their own excellence, are part of the problem, then maybe Kerry GAA should try to be part of a solution. That might seem an odd thing to say in a week that the county has won two provincial titles with considerable ease, with the prospect of possibly winning another two - Junior and U-20 - by next Friday night.

But at what point does winning a Munster title start to lose its value when they’re being won every year with ease? Ahead of last Saturday’s final it was generally believed that while Cork probably couldn’t win the game they would at least press Kerry hard and to the end and shows signs that they are on their way back to being a least a force in Munster if not quite on the national stage. And now?

Just as Dublin have no opposition to come near them in Leinster, is there any reason to think Kerry can’t add another five or six titles in a row to the six consecutive titles they already have since 2013. On the basis of Kerry’s age profile last weekend, backed up by another crop of All-Ireland winning minors still to come of senior age, it’s not inconceivable to think the Kingdom won’t be stripped off their Munster title until sometime around 2025.

One could argue that Dublin’s utter dominance in Leinster hasn’t done their quest for All-Ireland titles any harm - quite the opposite in fact - so why would Kerry worry about scooping up the Munster title every June or July if it gets them a step closer and quicker to the All-Ireland Final?

Maybe the answer, as it often is in these matters, is money.

What happens when the Munster Football Finals, senior and minor, become so one-sided that the crowds simply stop coming? The average attendance for the last six Munster Football Finals is 29,772 and last Saturday’s crowd of 27,674 was a couple of thousand short of that mark. And that’s allowing for the fact that a lot of already disillusioned Cork football supporters decided to give their team the benefit of the doubt once more and head into the Pairc on a fine Saturday evening and pay at the turnstile. Do you think they’ll be so willing to dig deep again next year for the promise of another hammering by Kerry. And don’t think the allure of Killarney on Munster Final day is going to keep working when 15 to 20-point beatings become the norm.

Trickle down economics means that less money coming in from the Munster Football Championship gate receipts transfers into smaller cheques for every club, Kerry ones too, when the nice men from the Munster Council come around Christmas time with the grant money.

When your club got €3,000 in Munster Council grants last year but only gets €1,500 in 2020 there’ll be no need to ask why the reduction: the 18 or 19,000 attendance at the previous year’s Munster Football Final will be your answer.

The Munster Championship is ailing and failing. A sick Munster Championship won’t be good for anyone’s health. It’s time to come up with a remedy or worthless medals and less grant money will be the bitter pill everyone will have to swallow.