Now that football has a plan, here is one for hurling...
IN the wake of the ‘Super 8’ revamp of the All-Ireland football series, hurling needs a plan. Already, the chairman of the Hurling Development Committee Paudie O’Neill has described change as ‘inevitable’.
From 2018, the All-Ireland quarterfinal stage of the Football Championship will feature the top eight teams divided into two groups of four. Twelve games in total – an extra eight compared to the old knock out quarter-finals. That’s 15 high profile football games from quarter-final stage to completion. Compared to five in hurling.
So yes, hurling definitely needs a plan. The good thing? The tiered nature of the Hurling Championship means that it’s perfectly suited to a round-robin model. Even better is that the blueprint for a radically expanded Championship has already been prepared.
A previous HDC under chairman Tommy Lanigan produced a model which is both bold and imaginative – and yet maintains the primacy of the provincial championships. Here’s an updated version. Unlike the football format, it is fair and equitable, offers extra games to all involved, and also contains a major incentive to developing counties – not just the cream of the crop.
HOW IT WORKS:
Champions League style model within the provincial system. It involves three groups of five with every county playing four games, two home and two away.
The top two in the Munster and Leinster groups qualify for what is effectively a provincial final which means the value of the provincial final days are still protected.
And the top two in Group C still have a shot at the Liam MacCarthy Cup by taking on the third-placed teams in the other two groups in the All-Ireland series.
The two provincial final winners go straight through to the All-Ireland semi-final as is the case currently with the losers heading for the All-Ireland quarter-final stage.
In terms of promotion and relegation, the bottom-placed team in Group C would drop down to the Christy Ring Cup, to be replaced by the winners of that competition.
At the moment, the four lowest ranked teams in the Liam MacCarthy Cup – Laois, Westmeath, Kerry, Meath – take part in a Leinster qualifier group that is shoe-horned into late spring. That involves four matches in five weeks, right on the back of a National League campaign. For two of those teams, their season is effectively over on May 14, the top two going on to feature in a Leinster quarter-final.
The format proposed brings the games to the people, finally making use of the various white elephant stadia that have been constructed at great expense but which sit idle year-on-year, bar the occasional fixture.
A schedule where, apart from a county with a bye in a five-team group, every other county is out the same weekend, either on a Saturday evening or Sunday.
No long gaps. A match day format like the European Rugby Cup or Champions League. Rounds one and two on the first weekends in May followed by a gap week, followed by another two rounds.
Even featuring 37 games (30 group matches and seven in the All-Ireland series), it takes just 14 weeks to run off with the All-Ireland final slated for Sunday, August 14. That compares to the 2016 format which involved 26 games (excluding replays) and needed 18 weeks.
A mid-August finish leaves a bigger club window for club championships to be run off. Or if it’s deemed more valuable to hold on to a September finish, then there is room to create a couple of club windows during the summer.
There is time enough yet to call a Special Congress for October and vote in any agreed format for 2018.
If there was an appetite for bolder change, then the obvious next step is to go the extra yard and ditch the provincial groupings. Simply take those top 10 teams and operate an open draw to select the two groups. Seed the previous year’s provincial winners as an incentive.
Imagine the excitement of a draw that could pitch Kilkenny, Clare, Waterford, Offaly and Galway together in a group and another that could feature Tipperary, Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Wexford.
O’Neill was involved in creating the Celtic Challenge Cup, the Under 17 competition that was a stunning success in its inaugural year in 2016. A tiered model not bound by provincial convention, it gives a minimum of five games to over 1,000 players from all 32 counties.
There is no reason either not to run the Christy Ring, Nicky Rackard and Lory Meagher competitions in tandem. The Christy Ring Cup final was originally meant to be on the same bill as an All-Ireland semi-final.
Instead, it has gradually been downgraded. The first round of the Christy Ring Cup is slated for the same weekend as the Allianz Hurling League Division 1 final. ‘We are very open to looking at the hurling structure, very open,’ said GAA director general Páraic Duffy. ‘We will make sure that hurling is not dwarfed.’ This plan is as good a place as any to start.