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All-Ireland Hurling Championship Quarter Finals
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20-07-2006 2:30pm#1
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You are taking the wrong approach again Dub: Concentrate on the top 10 or 12 and stuff the rest. The top 10 or 12 are fine. It is the rest we need to focus on. Of course we are not going to get a Leitrim v Longford All-Ireland Hurling final, but we could at least get those counties to a competitive level. That is realistic. As to county boards that don't promote Hurling or indeed Football, there is a simple solution: If they won't put the effort into whichever is the weaker sport in their county, sack them and get in a county board in that will.
For example, the Kilkenny county board should be sacked if they don't promote football. Oh, and before you start telling me that Kilkenny has no football tradition, there are 10 counties in Ireland that have won their senior football provincial title less often than Kilkenny have. That includes 3 counties still in the hunt for this year's All-Ireland title. Another 2 of the remaining 12 are only just ahead of them in provincial football success too. A certain excellent footballer could have been a dual success if his county had promoted football. You may have heard of him. His name is DJ Carey. Yes he, and some of his illustrious team mates, could have brought a bit of success to their footballers had their incompetent county board promoted it. There are a number of high profile players around the country that excel in their county's weaker sport too, but are not given the option to pursue it. There are plenty of great hurlers in Kilkenny that have not a hope of getting onto their county team because of the players that are even better than they are. Many of them would play football if that outlet was given to them, and get to wear their county colours after all.
The League is definitely needed and it is important, even if some counties don't take it seriously. That is not the fault of the League, but of the general attitude towards Hurling. The League does help a lot of the mid-level counties and they are benefitting. Actually, the Longford footballers beat Kerry in the League a few years ago, in what was Jack O'Connor's first game in charge of Kerry. Some of Longford's current success was built on their League performances in recent years. Their Leinster Championship winning team in 1968, had some good league campaigns in the mid 60s too. So don't discount the League. We would be far worse off without it. We have to focus on the game itself at the base level in each county. Adopt the blueprints of the successful hurling counties, or even their own approaches to Football if they are good in that.
Offaly have only a handful of Hurling clubs, but even with that small base they've built something of a tradition in modern times. Birr have had particular success at the club championship level. Antrim and Down also work off a small club base. They're slightly further off the real big powers than Offaly, but they came close to pulling off a few shocks in recent years. Both have been very close to taking a big scalp, missing out by a point or two. The League does help those counties.
Other ideas could help. A few novel competitions like ones where clubs from stronger counties, not necessarily the best clubs, play county teams from weaker counties. Kilkenny playing Longford in a Hurling competition or friendly won't do much for Longford, but putting them up against a reasonably good Kilkenny club might. Trainer swaps could be done. Send a few Tyrone Football trainers to Tipperary and a few Tipperary Hurling trainers to Tyrone. With a little imagination you could come up with all sorts of ideas to help a county's weaker game.
The McCarthy, Ring and Rackard Cup system is good, though I would make one change. The counties themselves should be given the choice as to which one they want to play in. Last year Antrim went down and Westmeath came up, and they look like reversing places this year. Do either of them really benefit from that? Even having won the Christy Ring Cup last year, Westmeath might have been better off to play in it again this year, and should they go down this year to it again, it might suit them better to have another year in the top competition. They should at least be given that choice themselves.
Each county should be given the option of which competition they want to declare for. Obviously the likes of Longford or Donegal aren't going to want to declare for the McCarthy Cup, but the likes of Down, Westmeath and Antrim might want to. It should not be dictated to them that they have to go into the Christy Ring Cup. Being relegated this year is not going to help Westmeath and their confidence. They made progress and should be given the option of building on it by trying again next year. Equally, after winning the Christy Ring Cup last year, they might have been better off to stay and defend their title this year and build themselves up a bit more and so be a little bit stronger to go into the McCarthy Cup in 2007 than they were this year.
I could go on, but this is already another long post.
The basic message is: Stuff the top 10 or 12, they don't need our help. Focus on the ones that do. I've thrown in a few simple ideas on how that could be done. I have more, but as I said, this is already a long post. 0 -
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The problem is that we are only going to get real matches in real competitions. The championship is it. We only have two real competitions and as you say one of them isn't given full commitment. We have some others like the McKenna Cup, the Connacht League, the Walsh Cup etc. but the Championship is what counties really aim for. Even the best of the League games lack that cutting edge that the Championship gives. Two separate competitions are better, plus the other ancilliary ones. Having a Champions League format for the Sam and Liam, as many people advocate wouldn't work. In fact, with the way the League works at present, the latter stages are a knockout, so we do sort of have that model anyway.
Being in the country we are in, the weather conditions usually best suit matches in the middle of the year. Remember the "water polo" match we had in Portlaoise just 2 months ago? Also, as amateurs, teams improve as the year progresses. Players get fitter, teams build form, weather improves etc. Even for professional sports people, the same applies. So while Kilkenny v Cork sounds good, there would be a huge difference in it's quality on February 21st than later in the year. Teams may want to give each game 100%, but for a lot of reasons the Cork and Kilkenny players would not be able to do it on February 21st as well as they could come August or September. It is not really true to say teams don't give the League 100%. There is an element of that of course, but part of it is that at that stage of the year, they just are not in a position to do so. In any sport, individuals and teams peak at certain points and can't remain at that level for a long period. For Hurling and Gaelic Football the peak is about now and come mid-winter they will be at their lowest and will start to build again. So Cork v Kilkenny can never be as good if they are meeting when they are not at their peak and playing in poor conditions.
It's a nice idea that all the big counties play each other every year, but it's not that simple. A county's form goes up and down. Who the big counties are changes each year, and often over a short period of time. It is often the novel matches that serve up the best games and the games that are built up as being classics often disappoint, like last Saturday's Galway v Kilkenny game. A big pair playing each other every year loses some of that novelty. Cork v Kerry is an annual event, but because of that, although we occasionally do get some great games, it runs a bit stale and boring having it every year.
The best teams do come to the top in they Championship so we do get the big games every year, and they are between the teams that are the best at that time, which differs from year to year. Tyrone v Armagh or Dublin v Meath every year wouldn't always work because they would often be complete mismatches. It is better when Dublin and Meath meet when both are in good condition, which is what happens. Two teams not having met for a few years often adds spice to a game too.
A lot of the fixtures for Cork you listed would not live up to expectations, for the reasons I've given and so not fully achieve the targets you have. Meanwhile the other weaker counties are on the sidelines looking on, not really getting the opportunity. Different matches each year, bringing up all sorts of novel pairings is better and adds variety to a season and serves up some crackers from the least likely sources.
It's the quality of the teams that needs to be looked at not so much the structure of the competitions. Yes, we can tweak the competitions a bit. The qualifiers have been good. It has given us something, and given teams a chance of more games and the chance to build form and fitness and produce some great games. But it hasn't been the qualifiers themselves that have made new teams emerge. They had to be good enough to do so. Westmeath's footballers have done well in the qualifiers, but as I said previously, that is more down to what they did in the 90s, before the qualifiers came in. Without that, they would not have been in a position to take the opportunity when it came along. So again, it is the quality of work on the ground that makes the difference.
We'll never get all the teams up the standard we'd like, but we can certainly narrow the gap between the top and bottom teams. While the bottom teams won't challenge the big guns, they will at least give competitive performances and some will make a rise through the ranks. Moreso in Football, but even in Hurling, who the top teams are does actually change over a period of years. While some are almost constantly there, some others join the top table and make their presence felt for a time. One of Hurling's top 3, Tipperary, spent nearly all of the 70s and a large part of the 80s away from the top table, so even that can happen too.
The championship brings the best out of a team. The same pairing a few months earlier can often give a very different result. Even games in close proximity to each other often disappoint. Many fabulous matches ending in draws are damp squibs and totally imbalanced a week or two later.
To conclude, you can fiddle around with competition structures and fixture lists all you like, but if teams haven't got the ground work done, they won't do well in them. Bad teams don't do well and new competition structures don't make them into good teams. Only one thing will, and that is the groundwork.0 -
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