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

Ya I just thought that it was weird that Kiely went straight to that possibly leaving his veil of composure slip abit. Almost a "And now, where are you, Father Eamonn Hunter? Working with some pygmies in the South Seas" moment!

Ask the brother what happened!

Can you expand on veil of composure. I thought Kiely was very complimentary towards Cork, spoke about his days in UCC playing Fitzgibbon and teaching in Clonakilty.

Yeah but if they were playing nowadays they'd be abused left, right and centre on twitter and Facebook!!

Offaly has surely a bigger population than 6 thousand!

Cork v Offaly should on paper be a very one sided game, but in terms of bringing a crowd, Offaly will bring it when there's a big occasion, as with the u20 final a couple of years ago where they sold out nowlan Park. Cork fans might not show in the numbers they did for the Munster matches but they'll always bring a crowd. This won't sell out but if it was a double header there would be a ton of very disappointed fans from all counties.

Whatever about the Cork vs Offaly match, I can't see a large crowd at the Clare vs Dublin match. Clare might bring a decent crowd, but I'd be slightly surprised if the dubs have anything near 10k supporters there. May only have half that.

They'll do well to get 15k at Clare/ Dublin, if it wasn't for Laois hosting the Feile Portlaoise was an obvious venue for me.

Obviously not for the crowd at Cork/Offaly but I think it would cater Clare/Dublin, holds about 18k to the best of my knowledge.

O Moore Park capacity 22.000, so yes it would quite easily cater for the expected crowd

Keith rossiter has stepped down as wexford manager. Kilkenny wexford and waterford all looking for new managers now.

Interesting couple of months ahead in the southeast. Someone like Brian Dowling or Tom mullaly could have a few offers

I know it's a discussion for another day but the football championship has been brilliant this weekend... in general it really is outshining the hurling...

whether we want to admit it or not some new rules will be needed to make hurling less like rugby with sticks and more of what we had at the height if the Tipp Kk rivalry 15yrs ago..

Totally agree. So many shock results and new teams emerging. High scoring exciting game's. Football is cool at the moment.

Hurling very predictable in comparison. Same teams playing each other over and over

It's a shambles of a calendar. The provincial round robin looked like a great thing for a couple of years, in Munster at least, but it was actually killing the golden goose, the teams in it are completely over exposed to each other, playing the same fixtures over and over again. Cork v limerick should be an absolutely mouth watering fixture for a neutral, but they play each other constantly so I just didn't care about the Munster final this year and I doubt I was alone, especially since we all expect them to play yet again in a few weeks anyway.

In the meantime all those repetitive fixtures (league and championship) were all played off in shite weather. Now in the height of the summer there's a tiny handful of matches played in June, with no real club action yet either. So you'd have to wonder, even as a supporter of the split season, as I am, if maybe the current set up is anything short of a disaster. June should be absolutely full of hurling fixtures, instead they were all played in April. If we're not playing serious top level hurling in June, what are we even at?

A championship structure like the football is long overdue, if the munster championship is that sacred a competition it will still be great, as I've no doubt it will be. But we might get some more variety in the fixtures. Galway v Cork, kilkenny v Waterford, etc etc. There's few enough teams in the country already without artificially keeping them apart.

If we played the Munster or Leinster championships now, it would be directly up against the football. At least in April/ May, hurling gets full focus and big attendances.

The problem is simply not enough strong teams. Championship is just the division 1 teams playing each other again.

Cork footballers can go to Donegal and pull off a shock on a given day, even if they're playing outside top division. Sure look at Westmeath footballers this season.

But Donegal or Westmeath hurlers (or any lower division team) can't even compete with Cork hurlers.

We're down to just 6 teams in the hurling, and even then, Cork v Offaly could be a complete mismatch.

You can always make tweaks to the structure or calendar, but it's not the core problem.