Championship hurling begins next weekend. Its contemporary success, especially in Munster, owes its origins to an initially little-noticed proposal in 2012, suggesting round robin competitions for the provincial championships.
The GAA had no reason to harbour warm feelings for such a format. It had been tried in the middle of the previous decade as a vehicle for All-Ireland qualifiers and proved as effective as wet newspaper when it came to igniting interest.
So, the idea lay unused until football introduced the now long-abandoned All-Ireland round robin quarter-finals – the Super 8s. The idea of a programme of (theoretically) competitive football matches at the height of summer so alarmed hurling men that the GAA was pressurised into finding a revamp for the small ball championship.
The 2012 blueprint was dusted off and taken to a special congress in October 2017 where it secured the necessary 60 per cent approval – in the teeth of opposition, it must be said, from some of the leading hurling counties.
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There were reservations. Ger Lane, chairman of Cork, expressed a view that could be summarised as: why fix it when it’s not broken and also queried the timing.
“It’s ironic that after one of the best Munster championships in a long time [Cork had won it] that this change comes in.
“It’s going to be a changed championship, a changed GAA because people live for the Munster championship and now it’s going to be a different format. At the end of the day, democracy wins out. It got through today and we’re going to have to live with it.”
There were other concerns. It all appeared as a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to hurling’s panic, based on apprehension that football fixtures would overwhelm hurling’s biggest matches but also that the round robin was surely at the wrong end of the season.
Wouldn’t its most effective deployment be for the closing rounds when the best teams had emerged?
Anyway, in it came for 2018.
Fast forward eight months and early indications of its potential came on the June bank holiday when – ironically, given the home county’s stance – the Cork vs Limerick match in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which ended in a dramatic draw, drew 34,675 spectators on a glorious Saturday evening, foreshadowing last May’s tumultuous full house for the same fixture.
The format achieved two things quite quickly. It provided home matches for everyone and proved very competitive – the two outcomes probably interconnected.
Across Munster and Leinster, in the five years of the round robin – interrupted for two seasons by Covid – only two teams have recorded 100 per cent records: then All-Ireland champions Galway in the first year in Leinster and soon to be champions Tipperary in Munster a year later even though they were annihilated by Limerick in the provincial final.
Box office records have been tumbling in Munster. Two years ago, accumulated crowds broke new ground with total attendances reaching 310,440. Last year’s provincial final attracted 45,158, taking 2024 beyond that mark to 315,881.
No wonder provincial chief executive Kieran Leddy, in his annual report at the beginning of last year, described the Munster senior hurling championship as “the competition that keeps on giving”. In this year’s report, he outlined why.
“The [2024] competition returned a gross gate of €6.795 million, which amounted to 85 per cent of our total gate receipts.”
Indications for the coming championship suggest there will be no downturn in those figures.
If Leinster has lagged over the same five years, it is partly because of Munster dominance of the All-Ireland championship, which inevitably affects attitudes in the other province.
Last year equalled the record of seven successive MacCarthy Cups for a province, set by Munster 1940-46 and 1948-54. A new record is more than likely to be established this July.
Kilkenny are marking the 10th anniversary of their most recent All-Ireland and although they have dominated the province since the turn of the decade, they have rarely threatened at the very top.
Galway were champions when the format was introduced but have gone no farther than a couple of semi-finals in the meantime. Wexford drove a record Leinster final attendance in 2017 with 60,032 turning up to see them play Galway.
They won the province two years later but have fallen back, depriving the Leinster Council of the full benefit of their most potent crowd pullers.
The province has also provided decent competition with the arrival of Galway, who nonetheless were victims of a crazy dead-heat finish six years ago in which four teams finished on five points with Wexford, Kilkenny and Dublin taking the top three places on scoring difference.
Overall, four counties have had some experience of qualifying for the All-Ireland series.
The danger in all of this is that formats reflect competitive realities rather than vice versa. If the structure helps to level the playing field a little, it could not have done much to rescue things during the Kilkenny supremacy a decade or so ago.
It is also a nagging anxiety for Munster. Competitiveness requires at least four viable teams. For whatever reason, Waterford have never in all five years emerged from the round robin despite cropping up in an All-Ireland final and semi-final when it was in abeyance.
With their golden generation hitting 30, there’s not much time left if that is to be redressed.
Clare may also be in difficulties, as their double medallists are also getting on, and they were largely the rainmakers in the second All-Ireland last year. If the team continue to experience the sort of hangover evident during the league, restoring their vigour for 2026 will be challenging.
Then again, why speculate on potential difficulties when there’s a keenly anticipated championship about to start? Let events take care of themselves.
e: sean.moran@irishtimes.com
