IN ALL FAIRNESS - Let battle commence

As I sit here typing this column, I am looking out at a bleak and chilly April Tuesday morning, hardly championship weather.

After two Covid impacted years where the round-robin format was put on ice, it’s back starting next weekend, but not entirely the same.

In 2019 when we last had a proper hurling championship, it started on the third weekend in May, this year it is a full five weeks earlier, because of redrawing of the calendar brought around by the split season.

Only come the end of the championship in July, will we know whether it is a success or not. The reasons for it are understandable, to give the club game a decent chunk of the year in good weather, rather than being shoe-horned from September onwards in most counties. Already, we know this year the Tipp club championship will start by the last weekend in July, with clubs on notice to start as early as the last weekend of June if Tipp fail to progress beyond the Munster Championship.

However, what is good for the club game doesn’t mean it won’t impact detrimentally on the inter-county championship which is still the GAA’s biggest attraction from where the vast majority of funds are generated to filter back to the clubs in terms of grants, coaching, equipment etc….

It should help that in its first year of the earlier start that the championship begins on a Bank Holiday weekend so there is a summer type vibe which should allow fans to get to games in strong numbers. Walsh Park in Waterford should be an 11,000 sell-out for Waterford v Tipperary and would probably be double that if there was an unlimited capacity, while I wouldn’t be surprised Pairc Ui Chaoimh is close to its 40,000 capacity for Cork v Limerick.

That’s an impressive start in anyone’s planning and shows the demand there is for the inter-county game, and the risk there is by bringing that season to an end by the end of July. It’s harder to judge what will happen in Leinster. Wexford v Galway is the marquee game on the opening weekend, but the distance Galway fans will have to travel might impact on the attendance there, however Wexford fans should ensure we shouldn’t see too many empty spaces on the terraces on Saturday. Westmeath v Kilkenny and Dublin v Laois should get league-type attendances.

One of the risks of such an early championship start is the weather. Look it, in Ireland you could get any type of weather in any part of the year, but there is a greater risk of colder wetter days in April and May, but you could be lucky, and this weekend looks okay, although not the t-shirt weather which would have been ideal to herald the championship.

There are still those that pine for the old days and the knockout format, but the round-robin is so dog-eat-dog, particularly in Munster you can’t afford to lose any match. The losers of Waterford v Tipperary and Cork v Limerick will still qualify for the All-Ireland Series if they respond and win their three remaining games, as Clare did in 2018 and Limerick in 2019, despite getting off to losing starts. While ultimately, they didn’t go onto win the All-Ireland, the only thing any of the All-Ireland contenders can focus on in the short term is being one of the top three at the end of the round-robin phase in their respective province as it is too competitive to think beyond that just yet.

There is an argument that the hurling championship is unbalanced as Munster appears to be stronger than Leinster and that come the end of the round-robin, there potentially will be teams in Munster out of the championship better than Leinster teams still in it. I don’t accept that. There isn’t much between any of the big nine teams, but Munster does carry more prestige in terms of a championship where there are traditional rivalries among all the five counties. You can’t say the same about the six in Leinster currently, but it will get there over time as they play more regularly on an annual basis.

Conventional wisdom says Limerick, Waterford, Cork, Galway, Kilkenny, and Wexford will be the six teams left standing when the round-robin stage ends on May 22nd but it’s unlikely to be that straightforward, and hopefully that will be the case again this year with Tipperary making some noise.

Not many would have predicted Tipperary would miss out in 2018 and Galway in 2019 by the end of the group stage, so who will be the 2022 big name(s) to fall by the wayside after six compelling weeks of action? Let battle commence!