PUT A STOP TO THIS CLUB MADNESS
The calendar just cannot sustain St Patrick’s Day finals a full four months after provincial deciders
BY THE end, the game had taken on an epic quality, befitting the hurling year. On a heavy sod, as the light began to wash out of a November Sunday, the players of Ballygunner and Ballyea gave their all. A pulsating hour plus injury-time of regular action wasn’t enough to decide a Munster club semi-final, Philip Mahony going allin from half-back to gamble on a run into the Ballyea full-forward line and send a stunning first-time pull to the net.
Two 10-minute periods of extratime weren’t enough either, Niall Deasy showing an ice-cool nerve to slot a 65 and string the drama out further to include two more fiveminute periods of extra-time. On and on it went, the game taking on a mythic air until JJ Hutchinson emerged from a ruck with the ball in hand to the last blast of Fergal Horgan’s whistle.
Fergal Hartley’s take on it all? Like no game of hurling that the Ballygunner manager and former Waterford player could recall in 27 years’ involvement in senior hurling. The only quibble was putting the players through such a slog in fading light and on a pitch that was cutting up. The second period of extra time is nobly intended, aimed at increasing the likelihood of games finishing on the day and thus not disrupting the master fixture list.
If a replay had been used instead of extra-time, it would have meant the winners playing four Sundays in-a-row. With reigning Munster champions Na Piarsaigh already waiting in the final and with their players rested, that would hardly have been an ideal scenario either.
The big joke is that the Munster champions will have a three-month wait until the All-Ireland semifinal. The unfortunate punchline to the provincial club championships is that the lack of a calendar year schedule ensures the campaign is unnecessarily elongated to fit in a specific date for the decider.
The inconvenient truth? A St Patrick’s Day finale is an anachronism that is completely out of place with hurling’s new world – and that of Gaelic football too.
Ballygunner and Ballyea had to play two separate periods of extra time in heavy conditions in a heroic slog last Sunday yet the eventual provincial champions will potentially play two matches over nearly four months when it comes to the All-Ireland semi-final and final and trying to win out the competition outright.
After the year that’s been with counties playing week-in, week-out, it’s no longer sustainable to hold on to St Patrick’s Day.
Just look at the scheduling farce of last year’s competition. On October 22, 2017, Slaughtneil beat Ballygalget in the Ulster club hurling final. On November 19, Na Piarsaigh beat Ballygunner in the Munster final. On December 3, Cuala hammered Kilcormac-Killoughey in the Leinster final while the same day Liam Mellows beat Gort to effectively assume the mantle of Connacht champions.
Here are the crazy gaps then before they played their next game in the All-Ireland series, the semifinals scheduled for the second weekend in February.
Slaughtneil: (112 days = 16 weeks); Na Piarsaigh: 84 days (12 weeks); Cuala and Liam Mellows. That’s 70 days (10 weeks), basically, between three to four months of training for a single match. Roll it on then to the St Patrick’s Day finale which ended in stalemate between Na Piarsiagh and Cuala and required a replay. So, after waiting between 10 and 12 weeks for a semi-final, the two teams had to play two All-Ireland finals within seven days. It meant that the gap from the end of their provincial campaigns to the end of their All-Ireland campaigns was 18 weeks for Na Piarsaigh and 16 weeks for Cuala. Madness. Especially when the inter-county model was radically changed in 2018 with the introduction of the round-robin in Leinster and Munster and the Super 8s format for the All-Ireland quarter-final stage of the football Championship.
How do the massive gaps in the club championship schedule square with the entire Leinster and Munster hurling championships being run off within six weeks?
County teams like Wexford played their entire Leinster hurling championship in just 21 days. That’s four matches against Dublin, Offaly, Galway, and Kilkenny. Tipperary’s four-match Munster campaign – what proved to be their entire Championship campaign – was squeezed into the same 21-day window.
Waterford too, Offaly’s lasted just a tiny bit longer by virtue of a Saturday evening start and a Sunday afternoon finish.
Or look at the schedule for a team like Galway, the defending All-Ireland champions. Between the Leinster final and replay against Kilkenny, an All-Ireland semi-final involving extra-time and a replay against Clare, and an All-Ireland final against Limerick, Galway had to play their five biggest matches of the year in seven weeks.
The eventual All-Ireland champions Limerick faced a similar tight schedule. After a preliminary quarter-final against Carlow on July 7, a late flourish was needed to seal a historic victory over Kilkenny the following weekend while the semifinal on July 29 against Cork went to extra-time. Taking in the final against Galway, their entire AllIreland series was played out over just six weeks.
In football, the Super 8s meant extended gaps between games were also a relic of the past at county level – Tyrone played nine games in the All-Ireland series alone over 12 weeks.
So why is the All-Ireland club championship so out of step? The St Patrick’s Day finish only leads to multiple overlaps with other competitions, particularly colleges and National League. It’s simply not fit for practice any more.