All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship 2026 (Munster & Leinster Championships, Liam McCarthy Cup)

Why do leinster teams always have to go to a munster venue to play munster teams? Saturdays all ireland minor preliminary games ,cork wexford and clare Dublin in thurles.

All Ireland quarter final double headers last few years at senior level in thurles or Limerick! Totally unfair. Are munster teams afraid to play in a leinster venue?!

The GAA rejected it, led by the counties themselves, at recent congress. Administratively, most counties are in favour of the current structure because it allows them to implement a coherent and planned timetable for their domestic competitions. Personally, I would like to attend championship matches without having to wear a heavy / rainproof jacket, and be able to look forward to the finals in September as in the good old days.

Having no match after May sounds early.

But consider that even the All-Ireland finalists don't play after mid-July. The 2 losing semifinalists are finished in early-July.

With the split season, there has to be a "business end" of the championship at some point.

I think there is an argument to be made where the teams eliminated from the Liam McCarthy (like Waterford, Wexford, Kildare etc.) enter the closing stages of the Joe McDonagh or some sort of Tailteann equivalent.

It could bring them a couple of extra games and maybe a Croke Park appearance if they made the final.

For a county like Tipp this year who won Liam in 2025 they might not be motivated by a Joe McDonagh campaign. But it would be a nice opportunity for their u20s or fringe players to play senior intercounty, maybe in Croke Park.

It's not perfect or anything, but I think it would be good if it existed. It would be beneficial to the likes of Carlow this year to get some tough games this season already ahead of their likely return to Liam McCarthy next year.

If it was totally dominated by Munster - and I'm not convinced it would be - you could bring in a rule, for example, that only players up to age 23 can be selected by those counties.

Yeah it would completely devalue it imagine how the other sides would feel if a Tipp underage side beat the senior sides?

Tipp knew the format before they got into the championship. Just because they won the all-Ireland last year, doesn’t give them a “protected species” label. As it should be.

Yea, and Frank Lohans son was excellent for the Galway minors last night… pity we couldn't have got jobs and houses for Ollie and Frank at home!

He is Garda Superintendent in Ballinasloe. His wife is Superintendent in Athlone.

Whats wrong is we tried this already and it was a massive failure because players won't risk playing club in between.

These arguments are like goldfish going round and round forgetting every rotation.

You could get injured training with the county as handy as a club match

The system is the best ever. The best they can do is maybe delay the season by 2 weeks and have the final end of July/ early August.

Jesus right in the middle of the championship with, if anything, too many matches going on each weekend so that it ends too quickly, and yet all anyone is talking about is the championship structures again. You have all winter to complain and make up awful hypothetical structures that are going to make Kildare good and let Waterford lose six matches and still not be out.

This weekend on the other hand you have an my absolutely fascinating match between kilkenny and Dublin, that could lead to kilkenny going out of the championship at this stage for the first time in the round robin era, and nobody seems to have an opinion about it.

Be interested to hear from the Dublin lads what the thoughts are about how they'll approach it. I thought last week that they became a different monster when they had hetherton and the other big lad inside (sorry I forget his name) and just went direct, but I'm not sure that approach works for seventy minutes and I think kk are better set up to deal with direct ball than Galway are, defensively. Wondering as well if kk will revert to keeping tj on the edge of the square, hopefully moving Cody out to cf to give rushe something to think about and not be able to drop back. We're missing molloy so might need to drop Kenny to midfield which limits our attacking options in a major way. There are alternative plans but either way we'll be robbing the half back or half forward line.

Kk have looked extremely vulnerable this year, Dublin are on the up, home game, momentum and the smell of blood in the water will bring a big home crowd. Kk need to make a huge statement here and if we don't, we are better off going home early anyway.

I don't think the players would have much of an issue - it's the managers that want total control over everything. From listening to Pat Ryan on the Indo GAA podcast when talking about Fitzgibbon, he said players prefer and have no physical problem playing college and county in the Spring. The risk is no greater than playing training matches. The increasingly obsessive all consuming arms race preparation for inter county teams will damage the game long term.

Galway minors didn't have a flaky mentality the other evening.