IN ALL FAIRNESS - Semi-Final weekend becoming a must attend
What was initially designed for Gaelic Football has ended up benefiting Hurling to a greater extent.
When at GAA Congress in February 2017, proposals for the Super 8's were voted in, hurling followers began to panic. Hurling, always in the shadows of Gaelic Football, they felt would become even more so when it comes to championship with more games between the better teams at the business end.
Hurling counties quickly got into gear and devised their own new format which has proven to be a greater success than in Gaelic football with the round-robin stage taking place earlier in the competition with the best taking on the best with the top three from each province progressing to the knockout stages, and certainly in the first two years of this three-year trail, hurling has certainly been the winner.
What the new formats in hurling and Gaelic football also necessitated was a change to the calendar and with the All Ireland finals being brought forward by two weeks to create more space for club games in autumn, it meant instead of both All Ireland semi-finals being played on consecutive weekends as was the case, they would now be played on the same weekend.
Initially the dooms-dayers were saying that the GAA is losing a promotional opportunity in not spreading out their games when they have the summer to themselves with, in particular, soccer and rugby in their off-seasons. However, so far it has proven to be a massive success. Instead of the All Ireland Final being the showpiece event of the hurling calendar, a second one has been created with the semi-final weekend in Dublin.
It won't always be the case that in the first two years of the semi-final weekend that we have had four classic semi-finals but certainly they have helped the weekend become one to be marked on the calendar by all hurling followers and is something the GAA needs to build on.
I like many others took in the opportunity to take in the first semi-final on Saturday evening while in Dublin and it was a rare but wonderful experience to attend a big game like this without skin in the game (well kind of) and be able to enjoy it. It was great to see hurling supporters sporting jerseys from non-competing counties, all there for the love of the sliotar and ball.
116,000 people attended both semi-finals last weekend (55,000 at Kilkenny v Limerick and 61,000 at Tipperary v Wexford) out of a capacity of 164,600. Such has been the success of the first two years that the GAA should be targeting selling out both semi-finals each year, by attracting more neutrals from non-competing counties to be part of a festival of hurling. It's also something that could be used to show the game to tourists to attend a semi-final game on that weekend months in advance. The same can be done for football on their semi-final weekend in two weeks time.
That's the kind of promotional value that over-priced tickets for the semi-finals as they are, can't buy.