TOP PICKS REFLECT AN EPIC YEAR

Limerick and Galway are dominant but it’s only to be expected after a season for the ages

THE more things change, the more they stay the same. By the time the last name was out of the mouth of The Sunday Game panel for the Team of the Year, the inquest had started.

How could the new-look Championship with its roundrobin format in Leinster and Munster and encompassing 20 games before the All-Ireland series kicks in, still be dominated by the two teams that reached the final? Champions Limerick maxed out with seven players making the final cut. Galway, only squeezed out in the final by a point, earned three. Beaten semi-finalists Cork and Clare nabbed two spots each with Kilkenny’s Eoin Murphy the only representative from outside the last four.

In theory, the expanded championship should broaden the base and provide a greater body of empirical evidence to get away from the notion of a big performance on final day playing a significant part in swinging the vote.

What about the likes of Dublin’s Chris Crummey, outstanding during Dublin’s Leinster campaign?

Turns out the theory didn’t quite match up with the practical reality.

Backing up any Limerick claims is the fact that John Kiely’s team needed eight games to win the All-Ireland – a record, matching that of Offaly in 1998 and Clare in 2013. Throw in the rare feat of vanquishing hurling’s holy trinity of Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary along the way, not to mention the defending All-Ireland champions, and it’s easy to argue that Limerick deserve all the plaudits thrown their way, both individual and collective.

The problem for the likes of Crummey is that Diarmaid Byrnes or Dan Morrissey, the two Limerick wing-backs, played twice as many games this summer. Then throw in Limerick’s part in the All-Ireland semi-final thriller against Cork that involved extra time, the quarter-final against Kilkenny and the drawn Munster round robin game – three of the top five games of what is unofficially the greatest Championship ever.

Last Sunday was Galway’s ninth game – a record in the history of the game. In contrast to Limerick, who lost a single game in Munster to Clare, Galway came in unbeaten. Two replays, in the Leinster final against Kilkenny and an All-Ireland semi-final against Clare, only increased the disparity between them and especially those four teams who didn’t make it out of the provincial groups and wrapped up with just four games – Dublin and Offaly in Leinster and Tipperary and Waterford in Munster.

So a player like Pádraic Maher who stood as resolute as any Tipperary player is competing for a slot in a half-back line where Hurler of the Year Pádraig Mannion has nine games to rubberstamp his credentials.

If the final team seems unfairly skewed towards the last teams standing, well, it just reflects the story of this year’s championship. A player who has double the amount of chances to prove his worth is likely to do just that.

What the expanded championship has done though is increase the depth of contenders. When a full list of nominations is