Wheels of change well in motion for new GAA landscape
Colm Keys looks at how the hurling championship might evolve after today’s Special Congress
THERE’S quite a degree of irony about the staging of a Special Congress in Croke Park this morning to debate reform of the hurling championship among other things, just seven months on from an annual Congress that significantly altered the landscape of the football championship for only the second time.
So much for the wheels of change in the GAA turning slowly. Comparatively, they’re spinning so fast in terms of competition structure and calendar change, it can be quite difficult to keep pace.
Right now, the GAA calendar feels like it’s a giant construction site, a series of tower blocks under renovation with scaffolding attached to just about every side.
SNAGS
It’s messy. Hard hats are still compulsory and a clear picture has yet to emerge, with so many tweaks and snags to be addressed and so much incremental change over the last few seasons that may not have drawn the same public interest as the headline attractions.
But to those charged with servicing the utilities, they make all the difference.
For instance, a motion today seeks to establish the minor grade at club level as an U-17 competition (down from U-18), falling in line with how it is to operate at inter-county level from next year on.
By taking U-17 players out of the adult net, the potential removal of so many creases is there.
The engineers are confident that they’ll deliver the overall project on time and within specification and that everything will be in sync – more championship games in a more condensed period of time, with less capacity for hold-ups eventually creating bigger windows for sustained club activity at the back end of the year.
Whether health and safety approval will be forthcoming after that will, of course, be the ultimate test.
This morning represents another significant step in the process.
Reform of the hurling championship is the flagship proposal from the GAA’s Central Council, seeking to turn the Leinster and Munster championships into round-robin series, in which each of the five teams in both provinces will have home and away games.
At once, it solves the issue of Galway not having any home championship games since their move into Leinster in 2009, while also providing a greater number of championship games across the board, answering the call that went up after the addition of eight extra All-Ire- land quarter-finals in football was passed last February.
But how loud is that call now? After two exciting provincial championships, during which Cork in Munster and Wexford in Leinster emerged from relative wilderness and Waterford and Galway took centre stage in an All-Ireland final for the first time, the quality of the hurling championship has prompted thought as to whether change is required at all.
And that’s despite the vastly inferior number of games between football and hurling – 28 hurling including six Leinster qualifier games to 68 football (including eight extra All-Ireland quarter-finals) – that there could be in 2018.
Counter-motions within the current framework have come from Tipperary, Cork and Dublin.
Dublin are seeking the involvement of both provincial champions in All-Ireland quarter-finals, while Cork are pitching for two round-robin All-Ireland quarter-final groups, creating 10 extra games later in the season rather than earlier as Central Council plans.
The proposed creation of a second tier by Central Council, below a 10-team MacCarthy Cup, is also significant in bringing greater standardisation. Westmeath and Laois emerged from the existing Leinster qualifier group but really only have Offaly in their sights after that.
Naturally, those counties being earmarked for tier-two competition are irked at being cut adrift from any involvement in the MacCarthy Cup in the same year and three of them – Offaly, Laois and Meath – have proposed an amendment to the main motion whereby the top two teams would play the third-placed teams in the provincial championships in preliminary All-Ireland quarter-finals.
The importance to the overall plan of getting the round-robin passed is wrapped up in the alignment of a new tier-two competition and the Ring-Rackard-Meagher Cup competitions to correspond with MacCarthy Cup fixtures.
If the status quo remains, the Leinster qualifier will still require three weekends to play out before a Leinster hurling championship proper can commence.
That, inevitably, eats into the ‘free’ April that Croke Park is working towards and is one of the ideals of the Club Players Association.
But, in reality, even if April is kept free for clubs, how many inter-county managers are really going to accede to it with championship matches stacking up quicker than ever just around the corner in May?
Safeguarding against weekend challenge matches and applying penalties for weekend training camps, motions also down for discussion today, will only go some way to giving some time (and inter-county players) back to clubs in this key window.
Whatever happens this morning, a new fixtures landscape is being created anyway, one that will become a lot clearer over the next week when the Central Competition Controls Committee sit down to finalise the distillation of all those incremental changes of the last few years.
INEVITABLE
A January start to the leagues is inevitable with the finals now being brought forward to the first weekend in April – Sunday, April 1 in the case of 2018.
The scheduling of pre-season competitions is also expected to change with plenty of speculation that the Sigerson Cup is going to start earlier and finish before the pre-season provincial competitions are concluded.
That would make third-level involvement in those pre-season competitions more difficult and somewhat pointless if semi-final and finals are being pushed back to February and March.
Already colleges are out of the McGrath Cup and Connacht League next season.
A championship start has been mooted for the end of April but is more likely to kick off on the first weekend in May now.
Ulster’s practice of playing one game per weekend will end while provincial finals will be pencilled in for mid June.
All of the hurling championship motions are likely to be voted on at the same time with an elimination process scaling it down to the last one.
If that’s the Central Council motion it can count on just two Munster counties, Limerick and Kerry, with Leinster split but good support through Connacht and Ulster, putting a 60 per cent target within range.