Championship link can solve league issue
IN ALL FAIRNESS
There is a thesis to be done on the mentality of Irish people putting store in games that have nothing at stake. That 6,531 people braved a frigid Saturday night under the lights at FBD Semple Stadium for a dead-rubber National Hurling League game between Tipperary and Clare is further evidence that for all its criticisms, the game is largely in rude health, and rivalries still matter.
There is a lot written and said about how the National Leagues are treated, not only by the managers, but by the GAA hierarchy themselves. That won’t change, the championship remains the be-all and end-all so no amount of tinkering with formats will work, unless it is linked with the championship. It’s hard to know if there is the hunger for that as managers like the flexibility of being able to rotate their teams in the league to give players opportunities, without the pressure of getting a result.
In the previous merit-based incarnation of the hurling league in 2017 & 2018, the All-Ireland winners in both years came from the second tier (1B) where the feeling was that Galway and Limerick came into the championship fresh without having been too beaten up in the league. We’ll see next year how 1B works for the demoted Wexford and Clare when they have to play the likes of Down, Kildare and Carlow, whom they would expect to beat comfortably.
The other issue with the league is that everyone loves it as a competition, but few want to get to the final, considering its proximity to the championship. This years hurling decider between Cork and Tipperary already looks like a sell-out on Sunday week on Leeside. However, how much will this likely high octane game take out of both sides as both Clare and Limerick sit back in wait for the opening round of Munster two weeks on.
Really, it shouldn’t matter as teams will either be playing challenge games against teams in other provinces, or having in-house training matches, to get their players up to speed so Cork and Tipp going hammer and tongs at each other shouldn’t be a disadvantage, barring injury. The only disadvantage, regardless of the outcome, is the winner or loser could be mentally blunted ahead of their championship opener.
They say the GAA is slow to change but they have changed a lot in recent years in many aspects, you only have to see how the trial rules in football have been pushed through in a very short space of time, the majority largely being successful and making the game much more watchable.
Bar the blight of illegal handpassing and overcarrying, hurling isn’t in bad shape in comparison but the leap the inter-county game could take is to have a joint league/championship format. Currently, between league and championship, each Munster team is guaranteed ten games (6 league and 4 championship), eleven for Leinster as they have an extra team. This years league started on the fourth weekend in January with the All-Ireland Final on 20th July so that is 26 weekends from beginning to end, not best maximising the weekends available for the players to show their talents, particularly after the end of May when there are only six teams left and eight weekends left upto the All-Ireland Final.
My idea is this, the 5 teams in Munster plus reducing Leinster to 5, would take part in an open league/championship competition where each team would play a team from another province once (5 matches (3 home & 2 away) but play the other teams in their province on a home and away basis (8 games), which would be a guaranteed thirteen matches for each team, with the league champion declared as the team at the top of the table.
This is where the championship element comes in. The points a team collates in their Munster only games would also count towards the Munster Championship with the top two teams getting to the final, with the winner going into an All-Ireland semi-final and runner-up into a quarter final, the same goes for Leinster.
The beauty of this format is that the next two highest placed teams in the overall league, not having progressed to a provincial final, would get the two remaining quarter final berths to take on the Leinster and Munster runners-up.
What this would solve is the current inequality where one province is stronger or weaker than another in terms of depth. To that end, the matches between the Munster v Munster and Leinster v Leinster teams would have three points for a win, where as the Munster v Leinster matches would be 2 points for a win. It means the provincial games would still mean more, plus the cross-over games between provinces with less points at stake, would give managers a chance to rotate their panel without being penalised too much.
If you add in break weekends, plus free weekends before provincial finals, and All-Ireland semi-finals and finals, such a format would easily fit into the current 26 week schedule and remove the current situation of not know what way counties are treating the league come the end of March with the Championship now officially on the horizon.