AND ROUND IT GOES
Hurling’s much talked about Championship revamp gets a green light at Special Congress
THE winds of change blew through Croke Park yesterday as the All-Ireland Hurling Championship underwent its most significant revamp in the 129-year history of the competition.
On a monumental day for the GAA, Special Congress narrowly voted to pass Central Council’s motion that will see the Munster and Leinster Championships run off on a round-robin system on an experimental three-year basis, starting next summer.
The motion, which also creates a new tier between the Liam MacCarthy Cup and Christy Ring Cup for six counties — Laois, Antrim, Westmeath, Carlow, Meath and Kerry — was carried by 62 per cent to 38, with 90 delegates voting in favour and eight abstaining from the vote. The decision to change the majority needed from 66 per cent to 60 per cent at last February’s Congress allowed the motion to pass.
An amendment — proposed by Laois, Offaly and Meath — allowing the finalists from that tier-two competition to play in a preliminary Liam MacCarthy Cup quarter-final against the third-placed provincial sides, also passed.
A pleased GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail proclaimed afterwards that yesterday was a landmark afternoon for hurling.
The 153 delegates who convened in the Hogan Suite from early morning didn’t focus entirely on hurling. Just before the close of business, Jarlath Burns and his playing rules standing committee got a motion carried which dictated that a kickout in football must travel outside the 20-metre line — despite an intervention from the Dublin delegation that claimed the rule would ‘punish innovation’.
Hurling, however, was the main focus and some were less than happy leaving Croke Park.
Tellingly, three Munster counties — Cork, Tipperary and Waterford — spoke out against the new Hurling Championship. Both Cork and Tipp had their own proposals, among the four motions to decide on a new structure, which were roundly defeated in an early voteoff.
Aside from the Central proposal, Cork called for a Super 8 in hurling at Liam MacCarthy level, Dublin recommended a return of four All-Ireland quarter-finals while Tipp proposed a losers’ group to run concurrently with the business end of the provincial championships. Both Cork and Tipp, as dual counties, raised concerns of the headache the increase in inter-county games in the two codes may cause them. Waterford chairman Paddy Joe Ryan went one step further, saying that backing the Central Council motion would be ‘the worst decision in the history of the Association’, although he did admit that the county hadn’t examined the other three motions.
Few shared Ryan’s sentiments with Connacht GAA president Mick Rock outlining the advantages of the new hurling format, insisting it would bring certainty to club fixtures.
‘The implications will trickle down to all tiers, eventually to every club in the country,’ Rock said. ‘Five tiers more accurately reflects the strengths of competing counties than the present system does.’
Rock also took aim at critics who suggested that restructuring the Hurling Championship was a reaction to the creation of Gaelic football’s Super 8, pointing out that the Hurling Development Committee, under Tommy Lanigan, had floated a similar idea in 2012.
‘It’s no knee-jerk reaction but it’s time to take that leap of faith again for three years,’ said Rock.
GPA chief executive Dermot Earley reminded delegates that 70 per cent of existing Liam MacCarthy Cup squads were in favour of the Central Council motion, although support wasn’t as widespread among the weaker counties. However, the carrot dangled in front of those who reach the final of the second tier competition — a pathway into Liam MacCarthy — was widely welcomed.
GAA director general Páraic Duffy conceded that the insertion of the tier-two finalists into the primary competition creates slight problems in the fixture calendar.
‘There has been a lot of work done on our fixture plan based on primarily that Congress would do what it did,’ Duffy said. ‘It is not a big problem. It can be fitted in. It would be easier if it wasn’t there but to be fair to the counties in that second tier, they are very, very important. It is not going to cause a huge problem.’
It remains to be seen if the restructured Championship will bring more certainty to the fixtures calendar. Nevertheless, a number of Central Council motions, presented by GAA trustee Niall Erskine, that were passed after lunch, are designed to ease the plight of the club player.
After the conclusion of the National Leagues, inter-county challenge games can only be played on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday while ‘training weekends’ have been banned except 10 days prior to a Championship game or 17 days prior to an All-Ireland final.
Those issues aside, this was really a day about the exciting possibilities that exist in hurling’s brave new world.