Aristocracy's grip on hurling tightens

On Gaelic Games: Where do we go from here? On the verge of a Cork-Tipp Munster final and with Kilkenny crushing resistance, albeit of an at best hesitant nature, in Leinster, has the old order trampled the last breath out of hurling's competitive pretensions?

Then again Sunday didn't materialise as some terrible epiphany. It's been coming down the track for ages. For each of the 10 years in the 1990s Kilkenny won the Leinster minor championship. In the early part of the decade, that set up three All-Irelands at the grade in four years.

Probably the most remarkable statistic of that period is that of the 41 players who started those three finals, only five went on to win senior All-Ireland medals.

This demonstrates two things: one that the old saying about players who have lost a minor final making the best seniors has a basis of truth and two that the benefit of successful minor teams is in the acclimatising of young players to the demands of playing at the top rather than the actual accumulation of silver.

In other words minor success deepens the pool of talent rather than guarantees its continuation at senior level. On top of that the teams of the later 1990s mightn't have been successful at national level but they were ensuring that none of Kilkenny's rivals in Leinster were experiencing any great encouragement themselves.

For a while it looked as if Offaly could get by on a couple of promising players and the club exploits of Birr but ultimately they ran out of road, and as long ago as 2000.

The three whopping championship defeats cut into them by Kilkenny in the space of about 15 months were stunning blows that scattered the old notion of Offaly always being able to impart a sense of fear to their great rivals of two decades.

And that wasn't the end of it in 2000. What must have appeared to be a chink of light for Offaly - the county's first provincial minor title in 11 years - turned out to be a gunship's tracking beam. Quite unnerved by the failure to win 11 Leinsters on the trot, Kilkenny began to look more favourably on the whole development squad system.

A blueprint was drawn up, distinguished former hurlers queued up to get involved and the process of player selection and development was streamlined. Leinster is back in their pocket and a couple of All-Irelands have been added to go with the same tally of under-21s.

It's at the stage now where the county can almost identify the 14-year-olds who will be renewing the senior team effort in seven or eight years' time.

As one well-known hurling source in the county put it in private conversation: "It doesn't mean that we're going to win all around us at under-age but it does mean that there'll be enough quality coming through. In many respects Kilkenny have moved light years ahead of the pack in Leinster."

They're certainly five years ahead of Offaly who only in the past year inaugurated their own development system. It might as well be light years.

Many of those who talk about Kilkenny and their grip on the game mention football and its lack of profile in the county. But whereas the point is valid - throughout the hurling world, football is, after all, the enemy - it's equally futile.

History has unfolded in the county without football being played at a serious level. That's the way it is and there's no chance of it changing. You might as well ask Brazilians to take up cricket - or indeed Armagh to take up hurling.

The tightening hold of hurling's aristocracy on the All-Ireland is much lamented but that's the game. It may be accorded a reverence and acknowledged as the national game but that's a cultural deference.

In the sense of serving the widest demographic, football is really the national game, played in all counties and within a durable, competitive framework.

Between them Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary have won over two thirds of the senior hurling All-Irelands. Golden ages in the game tend to define eras when one of the counties outside the top three has a particularly successful run: Wexford in the 1950s and Clare in the 1990s.

Offaly gave Kilkenny a savage 16-point beating in 1990 and the recollection imparts a rosy glow. Three days ago Offaly are on the receiving end of a 31-point trimming and everyone fears for the game. The well being of the aristocracy doesn't prompt such soul searching.

Yet the occurrence of golden ages is dependent for relief on ages that aren't so golden. For the past six years the big three have won all of the All-Irelands so hurling is back in its default setting.

There is wistfulness about the current situation because the brave new world apparently ushered in a decade ago with Guinness's advertising campaign, the expansion of television coverage and the emergence of Wexford, Offaly and, of course, Clare is receding into memory.

The GAA has come up with structures that seek to optimise the championship. The provincial system may be failing the game massively and reform comes slowly but, at last this year, the best eight teams will play in four quarter-finals. The trouble is that there is no longer the competitive depth to sustain it all as satisfactorily as say 10 years ago.

Liam Griffin said on Newstalk 106 last Monday that the new structures have come a decade too late. Had counties been guaranteed four matches a championship back then perhaps they could have grown from the experience.

But things have also progressed since the last golden age. Attendances have risen since 10 years ago. Clare's odyssey began against Cork in front of 14,101 spectators. Last Sunday's wretched Leinster semi-finals were watched by 6,000 more than the equivalent double bill in 1995.

The qualifier system enables less endowed counties to have some sort of a season but it also protects the strong against mistakes (as last year with both Cork and Kilkenny).

Yet who would seriously want to revert to the stark knockout format of the past?

Kilkenny and Cork may be dominating the new world as comprehensively as they did the old but that's the way it is and life moves on.