He's never actually won a Munster title but Tony Kelly would willingly sacrifice it all for the prospect of a more meaningful hurling championship. Kelly reckons it's the least hurling needs in the face of football's latest upgrade to "Super 8" status.
For Kelly, one of the stars of Clare’s 2013 All-Ireland hurling success, the great divide between hurling and football is now there for all to see: the congress decision to introduce a round-robin phase of the football championship – albeit on a three-year experiment from 2018 to 2020 – will see 18 football championship games played in the July-August period, compared to five in hurling.
“It’s definitely an imbalance,” says Kelly. “I hear a lot of lads giving out about the ‘Super 8’ in the football, but if something like that were to come into the hurling I’d be a fan of it. Maybe because there are fewer hurling teams, compared to football. Every football county in Ireland wants to play in the All-Ireland.”
Even if that means doing away with the Munster hurling championship?
“Personally I would, yeah,” says Kelly, despite the fact he’s never even played in a Munster hurling final (Clare last contested the final in 2008).
‘Massive for Clare’
“I can understand why winning a Munster championship would be a massive for Clare, because of the competition that’s there. But if you were to compare it to Dublin winning the Leinster championship in the football, I suppose from me looking in, from the outside, I don’t think it’s their goal.
“In Munster, for all the hurling teams, I honestly don’t think it’s their overall goal. It’s a massive achievement to win it but their overall goal is to get to Croke Park and win the All-Ireland. So personally I wouldn’t have an objection if they did get rid of the Munster championship and had an all-out proper All-Ireland series ran off, with everyone in it.”
Kelly was speaking in Croke Park ahead of his club, Ballyea, contesting their first All-Ireland final, on St Patrick’s Day, against Dublin’s Cuala. The club-county conflicts remain central to the GAA calendar, which is also why he believes the hurling championship as it exists is long past its sell-by date.
“I think the biggest thing is separating the calendar year, and having your intercounty season run off in two to three months. I think you have to have a club season and an inter-county season, just have a balance for the intercounty player and the club player.
‘Better games’
“I don’t know how the ‘Super 8’ is going to work out in the football because there are an awful lot of teams. But I think something like that in the hurling would give better games as well. Even last year, there were two good semi-finals, and a final, and that was about it really.
“And I don’t think the final was even as good as the semi-finals. But if you had that in July and August, hurling games like that, it would bring on hurling in leaps and bounds. We don’t have as many hurling teams as they do in football so I think something like that would really benefit hurling.
“I am a fan of bringing the All-Ireland finals to August, but I also wouldn’t see a problem with moving them back to September, if there was something like a ‘Super 8’ or a ‘Super 10’ even, or whatever, brought into the hurling. I suppose the biggest thing would be the provincials. If the provincials were to go, or something like that, I think would be unreal. If you look at Division 1A hurling now, how tight it is, if you had something like that in the middle of the championship I think it would be a really good championship.”
The prospects of facing Dublin champions Cuala on St Patrick’s Day, however, is something Kelly always felt was possible: like Ballyea, it’s their first visit to an All-Ireland club final, which can only add to the occasion at hand.
“No, once they got out of Dublin, from watching them, once they won their first round in Leinster I thought they were the favourites left in it.”
Knocking on the door
While the Clare hurlers still have a fight on their hands to retain their division 1A status, their footballers are knocking on the door of division one, helped on by Sunday’s win over Cork; none of this surprises Kelly in the slightest.
“No, they train in the same base where we train, and if you see the work that’s going into it, it’s absolutely massive. They have three games left, they’d definitely need two more wins, against Fermanagh, Kildare and Meath left.
“But there’s no reason, from beating Cork on Sunday, they can’t go into those games full of confidence and try and go for it and I think they will be going for it.
“Even before Sunday, the talk was, listening to people around the county, ‘if they could stay up it’d be great’, but from talking to lads I’d know within the panel, they’re not thinking about staying up, they’re thinking about winning as many games as they can.”
