No quick fix for hurling's uncompetitive championship

ON GAELIC GAMES:The problem for hurling at the moment is that very little is perceived as being at stake, writes Seán Moran

COMPETITIVE FIELD sport is a ruthless activity. It’s uncontrollable within its own parameters (although in the case of Gaelic games those parameters are often hard to establish). All you can do is place the contestants in the arena, apply the rules and let them off. There’s no opportunity to intervene and handicap teams that are better in order to enhance the competitiveness of the contest, no rules to prevent monopoly and no means of simply walking away.

This unforgiving framework looms over the forthcoming All-Ireland hurling championship because lack of competition does more to undermine the public appeal of sports events than anything else. The MacCarthy Cup gets under way on Sunday with the game’s most famous pairing, Cork and Tipperary, raising the curtain on the Munster championship. Maybe it’s because the match comes at an unusually early stage of the championship but anticipation is at best subdued.

Cork’s tumultuous year presumably has also had an influence. With the team very much in transition and the latest stand-off with the county board having left new manager Denis Walsh with just weeks to prepare the side, the mood in the county isn’t buoyant. Gaelic games supporters have poor stamina. When success emits its golden glow the crowds are out in force but come the dimming and the numbers fall off. You can argue it’s the same in any sport but even in the expanded GAA championships followers only have a few matches to attend and that’s if they’re lucky.

Professional sport is good at relentless promotion for big events and in the case of rugby recently the GAA has been uncomfortably aware of the competing presence but 2009 isn’t and will not become the norm for interest levels in Irish rugby. But at the moment that’s what the football and hurling championships are being compared to.

You can devise all the razzamatazz possible for pre-match and half-time entertainment but a low-key Celtic League match in Thomond Park or the RDS still won’t pull in big numbers. Sports events sell on the basis of their attractiveness as competition: what’s at stake and who’s contesting it? The problem for hurling at the moment is that very little is perceived as being at stake. Kilkenny are champions attempting a fourth successive title and before a ball is pucked in this year’s championship, are 2 to 5 for the All-Ireland.

A Munster title is a serious interim objective and constituted a real achievement for Tipperary last season and would be similarly regarded by other counties this time around but given the disappointing All-Ireland semi-final defeat last August, it’s unlikely Liam Sheedy’s team would regard retaining the title as quite the same cause for celebration.

It’s correspondingly hard for the county’s supporters to get as worked up as they did 12 months ago in Páirc Uí­ Chaoimh about the prospect of beating Cork (which at least then hadn’t been done at the venue for over 80 years) when even if they lose it wouldn’t matter were they to go on and somehow dethrone Kilkenny.

The league final showed why that is unlikely. Despite “getting in amongst them” or whatever euphemism is preferred in describing some of the indiscipline in Thurles, Tipp only succeeded in creating an edgy environment in which an under-strength Kilkenny eventually beat them anyway.

The scale of the champions’ domination is historic. Only once before has a county won six All-Ireland hurling titles in nine years, Kilkenny, and they went on to make it seven in 10. Only twice has a county got to six in 10 years (Cork in the 1940s and Tipperary in the 1960s). The qualifiers have made repeat success easier but none of Kilkenny’s All-Irelands have come through the parallel series – yet they have had to face the strongest fields in championship history in the sense of being undiminished by shock eliminations.

Last year the only county to have defeated them in a national final in the previous four seasons, Waterford, presented for the first Sunday in September and got handed the heaviest defeat in All-Ireland history.

Kilkenny also have the best record at underage level in recent years and so maintain a thriving supply system, which has created intense competition for places and allowed manager Brian Cody select teams on his terms rather than anyone else’s.

At a stage in its history when competition from professional sports is more intense than ever, the GAA could really have done with one of the more open, “democratic” eras instead of monopolistic hurling All-Ireland and a football equivalent that hasn’t been anywhere except Tyrone or Kerry in seven years.

Croke Park officials and others within the GAA will argue other sports aren’t exactly redistributive when it comes to silverware. The English premiership soccer title is nearly as poorly travelled as the Liam MacCarthy. But the league format and the value placed on finishing in some of the lower places and the strong incentive not to fall out of it are powerful motivations.

Football sometimes benefits from this variety. The qualifiers have allowed teams a sense of achievement without winning trophies: Sligo (and they went on to win a Connacht title), Fermanagh and Wexford are the best-known examples but smaller-scale triumphs are on most teams’ football horizons when the championship comes around. For hurling that’s not the case. The reason that such storied eras as the mid-1990s and the 1950s had the impact they did is because for counties like Clare or Wexford to rise as they did was unusual. What is seldom is wonderful.

Between them the top three of Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary have cleared 71 per cent of senior All-Irelands. The top three in football come in with just 55 per cent and that includes Dublin’s 22, of which 14 were won within the first 40 years of the GAA’s existence; hurling’s big three never win fewer than half the All-Irelands in any given decade.

Last year on the night of the All-Ireland final one senior GAA official admitted they were concerned that unless the hurling championship became more competitive, All-Ireland finals would stop filling Croke Park. It’s a worrying prospect for the GAA all the more so because there’s no quick fix to transform other counties into credible competitors.e-mail: smoran@irishtimes.com