Championship needs higher levels of real competition

The unprecedented dominance by Kilkenny has rendered the Leinster hurling championship unviable

“Yet the All-Ireland championship is the same problem writ large. Of the 12 counties contesting the MacCarthy Cup, how many have any chance not of winning the All-Ireland but simply of giving Kilkenny a hard match?

WITH IMPRESSIVE symmetry the GAA looks to be plunging or – if you prefer – talking

itself into recession just as

the country faces its own downturn. Attendances are down and in the angst afflicting the Leinster hurling championship has erupted into a flow of proposals designed to bring balance back to competitive structures.

Ned Quinn, chair of the Hurling Development Committee, has been tearing around like a tormented investment banker trying to maintain the value of his funds while share prices tumble all around him.

As he has been saying during the week, something has to be done about the current system because it’s not sustainable as it stands. With Dublin hurling now resembling a bubble in the wake of a hugely disappointing season, the penny looks to have dropped that the Dubs won’t be saving the competitive integrity of Leinster any time soon.

Without deviating from general agreement with Quinn and his HDC it’s also possible to wonder why it has taken so long to address an issue that has been current for most of the decade. Kilkenny are dominant at the moment because they are enjoying historical levels of success. Already the county has won five All-Irelands this decade, something the county hasn’t previously achieved, and there are still two titles left and the champions will be favoured to win at least one of them.

Hand in hand with this has been the collapse of viable opposition. The history of Leinster hurling has been one that coupled Kilkenny with another county, whether that was Dublin in earlier times, Wexford and later Offaly. The statistics of more recent years have been damning. Kilkenny have won 10 of the last 11 senior provincial titles and 16 of the last 19 minor championships. That’s unprecedented dominance and has rendered the Leinster championship unviable.

The combination of senior monopoly, which has by this stage demoralised both Offaly and Wexford to say nothing of Dublin, and under-age potential meant there was no future in Leinster as a competitive entity.

Yet, the All-Ireland championship is the same problem writ large. Of the 12 counties contesting the MacCarthy Cup, how many have any chance not of winning the All-Ireland but simply of giving Kilkenny a hard match? That’s not to say the champions are unbeatable but during manager Brian Cody’s 10 years in charge Kilkenny have been eliminated from the All-Ireland by just two counties.

Quinn made the crucial point during the week that formats and systems may come and go (and they certainly have in the past couple of years) but that development is central to sustaining a healthy championship in the years ahead.

What’s happening in Leinster is all about an absence of competition. There would be no need to reconsider Croke Park as a venue for the Leinster final were the match believed to be competitive. Eleven years ago there were record attendances at both the Leinster semi-finals and final even though that was the first season that the knockout format was diluted.

The crowds came because they believed Dublin had become competitive and the other three semi-finalists, Kilkenny, Offaly and Wexford had all won the All-Ireland within the previous four years.

There is no chance, despite the current formulation of an option encompassing the idea, of a completely open All-Ireland that scraps all provincial championships.

“If it’s not broken etc . . .,” is the essential argument put in defence of the Munster championship. That’s true. The province has been consistently competitive and has carried not just the hurling season but often enough the entire GAA championship in the early weeks by bringing together rival counties, which provide decent matches.

But it’s not as simple as that. The Munster championship isn’t a victimless indulgence.

For instance, in the past three seasons the All-Ireland has been run according to its most rational and even-handed structure. The initial skirmishes ended up with eight All-Ireland quarter-finalists.

It was fair in ordaining that the eight best teams went to the starting line together and all faced the same number of obstacles if they wished to win the title.

The much-reviled group stages provided guaranteed matches for weaker counties and allowed them a benchmark against which to judge progress but even were the case against the round-robin format felt to be unanswerable, the solution threw out the baby with the bathwater.

This was done because the system was felt not to provide a sufficiently attractive reward for the provincial champions. As a result Kilkenny, with a two-match winning average of 18.5 points, proceed straight to the All-Ireland semi-final.

This isn’t the champions’ doing. Kilkenny have consistently played ball with championship reform in recent years. County secretary Ned Quinn got unfair stick as chair of the HDC for conniving at a system that would benefit his own county. In fact the push for this indulgence came from Munster.

In other words a perfectly fair format was scrapped to cater for the Munster championship. So the provincial championship has consequences for everyone.

The current proposals likely to gain acceptance allow direct entry to the All-Ireland semi-finals for Munster and Leinster/Rest of Ireland winners but on the basis of more balanced competition.

Although nothing has been yet agreed it would be astonishing were Galway to stand in the way of this realignment. During the past 12 years the county has sacrificed a good few privileges in order to improve the overall hurling championship.

And while it’s all very well to argue that the county feels no obligation to prop up Leinster hurling, current concerns stretch well beyond the province. Even on the basis of self-interest Galway must surely recognise that playing a couple of unequal preliminary matches doesn’t equip them fairly to play for keeps with the likes of Cork, Kilkenny or Tipperary.

The HDC proposals are welcome if belated. But they’re not the full answer. The championship needs higher levels of genuine competition. If coaching and games development can’t produce improvement, chopping and changing the All-Ireland format is simply buying a bigger tablecloth to hide the scratches.

smoran@irish-times.ie