Proposal to Restructure the All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship

re unfair to developing counties, the format isnt finished but you'd presume that thered be some prequalifier like there is now as a pathway to the Liam mcCarthy for developing teams.
Its mentioned that one of the 5 leinster places would be through a development league .

enoughtaken wrote: »

You could have the Christy Ring winners and runners up play the 3rd team in the province for a quarter final spot.

its another game in the schedule so youre loosing 2 or 3 weeks in the entire hurling championship for all teams as they wait for this extra lobsided game, shoehorned into the middle of proceedings, over just keeping it simple.

I'd say too for the club player in a developing county you'd be happy to not add 3 more weeks
You'd have a development round robbin starting in April, feeding into a leinster round robbin in May/ June, and to drag another 3 weeks on to that for a qualifier for a quarter final to only prolong the wait till a Kilkenny batters them off the pitch in a miracle chance happening of them managing to win the ensuing quarter final.

A championship is there to see who is the best team, not to prolong the hopes of second rate counties and keep club players idle in the meantime.

letowski wrote: »

Did anybody read the Sunday Times yesterday? Is this a true story?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/irish-sport/round-robin-groups-point-the-way-forward-0z7vr85rk

Balls.ie condenesed the story

https://www.balls.ie/gaa/new-hurling-championship-format-364496

The main points:

- The Munster and Leinster Championships will be played on a group basis.
- Each Championship will feature five teams.
- Teams will play four games each, two home and two away.
- The top two teams in each group will contest the provincial finals.
- The teams which finish third in the groups will progress to an All-Ireland quarter-final along with the losing provincial finalists.
- Provincial winners will automatically progress to the All-Ireland semi-finals.
- The bottom two teams in each group will be eliminated from the All-Ireland Hurling Championship.

The proposal is expected to be presented to Central Council in mid-June and then to a Special Congress later in the year.

First off I accept that this is a thorny issue.

But I like the idea of the group stage system, I think its a step in the right direction for the hurling. It will increase revenue, have a more fixed hurling calendar that will benefit clubs, while still have the provincial systems in place. Players play more games also.

That said the idea put forward above has a few holes. Just having 5 teams in each province is unfair in not letting the developing counties take part in the championship. The biggest issue from a Munster perspective is one of WAT, CLA, LIM, COR and TIP, have to be relegated to whatever second tier structure is in place. That certainly won't go down well.

Overall though I think this style of format is the most best and popular sports competition format. One can look at all the biggest competitions in sport, Champions League, Football and Rugby World Cups, NFL, NBA, etc. They are all run in a group stage then knockout format. The hurling provinical championships are dead now, my own county will play Limerick in a month and probably only 15k will show up.

Anyway, that's what I think.

Not the case. Only 1 team from the cship will drop down

Seems like just another idea to get around the fact that if it was implemented this year, by semi final stages it would still be Tipp, and most likely Galway, Cats and maybe Clare or Waterford with outside chance of Wexford, Limerick, Dublin Cork.

No other team has a snowball's chance in hell of making it that far. That is simple truth of the matter and no amount of jigging it about will change that.

Group qualifiers when they were there were a disaster. Dublin were bad at the time but instead of getting one hiding from the Cats we were put into a group and got three more hammerings! One was sufficient, believe me :-0

i quite like the proposed system as it gives at least 4 games a summer for each team but we will only see a small number of Munster vs Leinster games each summer. I think we should try it for a year or 2 and see how it goes. Towns and businesses around the stadiums will surly benefit

Munster will be very competitve as anyone could anyone on there day , With Leinster being a tiny bit easier as team 5 (which would be someone like Offaly, Laois, Westmeath, Kerry etc) wont be as strong as Kilkenny, Galway, Wexford, Dublin

for ourselves in Waterford will Walsh Park be big enough or even pass a H&S check for a big championship game ???, same could be said for Cusack Park in Ennis.

Seems very much a reaction to the Super 8 in the football. I think the hurling side of the house might have been wiser to see how the first year of the Super 8 works in football and then decide on what's best.

Will the group stages of the championship look very samey in terms of playing the same opposition over and over after a few years with them being separated by province.

Tipp, Clare, Waterford and Cork will all play each other in the regular stage of league next year, then there is the knock-out stages of the league where odds are high some of these will end up playing each other as well. Then these four plus Limerick will all play each other again in the championship group stages with 3 of the 5 of Tipp, Clare, Waterford, Cork and Limerick getting to the knock-out stages and good odds of some of them meeting again.
That's before you even go near the Munster Hurling League - there's surely no way that will continue in it's present form.

Its not a bad plan. It accomodates all the so called 'top teams' and allows 1 of the so called lower group to participate and guarantees all teams a minimum of 4 games. I woudnt think it unfair on the developing counties either. How many times have we heard that games like tipp v offaly recently was of no use to either team. Its just impossible to please everyone. I like the idea of the 3rd placing making the AI 1/4 finals. It means that more than likely the last round of the round robin should not be dead rubbers. If all 5 munster counties were strong as is often is the case then there could be a slight imbalance that would favour say a weaker Dublin or Wexford team.(or visa versa of course) . Not perfect!

kkclubhurling wrote: »

An absolute death knell for club hurling.

go on, explain, and in more than 7 words please .

Doing that would mean that one of the 5 munster teams may have to fight to stay in the competition. The 10th place would seem to be up for grabs so unless Kerry start beating other Munster counties then the 5 Munster counties will continue in the competition every year regardless of their strength. Thinking about it if Leinsters 5th seeded team was stronger than Munsters 5th seeded team then the Munster team is still safe with the current proposal.

kkclubhurling wrote: »

An absolute death knell for club hurling.

Not necessarily, maybe bad for Kilkenny, as they generally have to play only 3 games to get to an All-Ireland final, but it's probably no harm that they'll have to play a few more games.

Compared to a team that went through the qualifiers to the All-Ireland, it doesn't make much difference. Take Clare in 2013 for example, 2 Munster Championship games, 2 qualifiers, QF and SF, so 6 games to get to final. With the new system, it will take teams 6 games to get to the final, or 7 if they lose the provincial final (the quarter final for 3rd place and losing provincial finalists is probably unnecessary though, top 2 in both groups should just go straight to semi finals).

Either way, it's still less than what it could take some of the football teams in the Super 8 format.

I'm generally in favour of it and think it's worth a try to see how it goes. It does seem like a more higher stakes version of the league (with the exception of being confined to only playing teams from your province as opposed to mixed) and as someone earlier mentioned you could easily have two counties play each other up to 4 or 5 times in a season between league and championship.
A fixed calendar is not a bad thing and allows the clubs guaranteed weekends to play off matches. If the championship was to go from say June - mid August (assuming they bring forward the AI final), it would give clubs the rest of August and all September to finish off their championship. Could also squeeze two rounds in around late April/early May. Schedule the league to maybe start a week earlier and finish by mid April.


One issue I see that I don't think has been mentioned so far is the problem with drawn games - they're a bit of a logistical nightmare at present and would surely be worse with the introduction of more games. It wouldn't be an issue with the round robin series but you'd have to expect at least one or two drawn games that require a replay at the provincial finals, AI quarters, AI semi or AI final.
I could just see a situation where this would happen and you'd have a team out every weekend for 5/6/7 weeks. You'd probably have threads on here and players/pundits speaking out regarding player burnout soon after. Would be interested to hear some players opinion on the proposal to see if they'd be in favour of it (i.e. more games).

If they do this then the league in current format should be scrapped in favour of a knockout tournament. Or at least the pre league tournaments should be abolished