Race for Liam Mac much more open

THE hurling championship isn’t quite as straight forward as its big ball counterpart. For one thing there’s a back door. That significantly opens up the range of possible outcomes. It’s also a lot more competitive a competition at the moment.

Very few of the Munster and Leinster championship fixtures laid down are slam-dunks or anything close. These are much more so fifty / fifty propositions. That makes it even more exciting and even more interesting for us to take a run down through the list of fixtures that await us when the championship gets underway in October.

As much as we’re shooting in the dark a bit when it comes to form in the football, that’s doubly going to be the case in the hurling championship. There won’t be any National Hurling League fixtures to ease teams back, it’ll be straight into it. Of course, challenge matches will be played and news of them will leak out, but it’s not the same thing. Not remotely.

The structure of the championship is familiar to us at least. For 2020 we’ll have straight forward Munster and Leinster championships, with qualifiers and All Ireland quarter-finals and semi-finals. Basically what was in place before the round robin Munster and Leinster Championships came into being two seasons ago.

A lot of hurling people would probably disagree with us here, but from our point of view the absence of the provincial round robins is no great loss to be honest. They kind of felt like more games for the sake of having more games, diluting the Munster championship in particular from what made it what it is.

Even with a back-door in place there are some real crackers here. The quarter-final between Limerick and Clare is a hell of a way to get the championships up and running. Despite Shane Dowling’s retirement last week, the smart money be on Limerick, but the Banner are no slouches either.

Whoever wins that clash will go forward to face Tipperary in the Munster semi-final – either way that’s going to be an explosive fixture and, if everything goes to plan, you could have the previous two All Ireland champions facing off. That’s a genuinely mouthwatering prospect.

The other side of the draw doesn’t have quite the same level of glamour attached. That said a clash between Cork and Waterford should be fascinating in its own right. Can Kieran Kingston and co recapture the form of a couple of years ago? Can Liam Cahill do the same with the Déise?

The stand-out fixture in Leinster is the semi-final clash between reigning champions Wexford and Galway. Even on the other side of the draw, the quarter-final showdown between Laois and Dublin will have a certain frisson after the midlanders’ surprise win over Dublin in the preliminary All Ireland quarter-final last July.

Awaiting them in the Leinster semi-final are Brian Cody’s Kilkenny. A side many people feel might be perfectly positioned to triumph in a short, sharp winter championship.

Maybe that will be the case. At the very least they should be in a Leinster final and after that the sky’s the limit.

It will be interesting to see this year if the teams who win the provincial championships are at a bit of a disadvantage in the All Ireland semi-finals. Given the condensed nature of this year’s championship, it probably will be worth team’s while to win the provincial finals – the Munster champion’s record in recent times has left that open to question.

The provincial finals are due to be played on November 14/15 with the All Ireland quarter-finals the following week on November 21/22. The All Ireland semi-final is then pencilled in for November 28/29.

It won’t be until after the championship that we can say for certain, but from this vantage point it does appear as though the direct route will be best. Get ready for skin and hair to fly in the provinces this year.