It’s slightly ironic that if you do a Google for the phrase “hurling is in crisis”, the seventh result is a Kildare Nationalist piece from May 2006. The chances are that, in any other semi-prominent topic in the world of hurling, Kildare won’t be ranking seventh, or anywhere near it.
The piece talks about championship reform in the context of a new GAA Presidency. ‘Twas Brennan’s Auld Lad who was a month into his three-year term in HQ – the same man who had also stood up at Congress in Cavan in 1994, and bluntly stated that “hurling was in crisis”. For those of us not old enough to remember the specifities of each hurling season, perhaps the only indicator that the previous years were particularly poor is the fact that Wikipedia doesn’t seem to remember anything about either of the ‘92 or ‘93 seasons. The world, in hindsight, doesn’t seemed to have stopped turning soon afterwards, but I’ll trust Nickey’s reading. Hurling, we should take it, was in crisis at that time.
Fast forward fourteen years and if things have changed, it can only have been for the worse.
Most counties seem to lose now - but, then again, most of them often did. But a misplaced criticism amongst most is that, despite a tiered system, we still get a series of total mismatches. Hurling, though, has always had this see-saw attribute: a team winning a game well can just pull away with relative ease; a quality we forget about all too often in a country where football is much more a dominance in our way of thinking. The notion that someone can catch a kick-out and score from the spot is foreign to football, but a staple skill in hurling. Scores come from everywhere. Hurling exploits it.
Nevertheless though, thinking back over the decades, the real romance of the GAA Championships lay in the notion that winner took all. Counties played their neighbours, in tense local cauldrons, and prove local superiority before departing for the Big Smoke of Croker to test your metal/mettle (delete as appropriate) with the champions of the other regions. The champion of All-Ireland was just that - the best the country had to offer, after gladitorial and deathly competition.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not an opponent of a back-door system. Good teams have bad days, and should be allowed to. Bad teams deserve more than one chance to shine. But there are two inherent things wrong with it:
1 - They devalue the Provincial championships. Being the best in your area means shag all now when regardless of the outcome when everyone taking part becomes part of the All-Ireland series anyway.
2 - Tiering. I’m sorry. I know the advantages of the tiered system; I know it lets teams of similar standards play each other on a more regular basis and helps foster development, but let’s face it, there are an unacceptable amount of mismatches in all three tiers. What’s more, hurling finds it difficult to attract fringe teams and seem competitive enough already, without actually having a system where only a third of the counties can actually win the All-Ireland in the first place.
While there’s a certain merit to the way the current backdoor system has turned out in hurling – the eight teams left are certainly teams of real quality, and would almost unanimously be the average pundit’s choices, the way in which this octet has been derived is what seems to be capable of improvement.
That’s my tuppence anyway – and my proposal for fixing it will come later this week. If you’re interested, be sure to subscribe to the RSS.
“Radical options are what Brennan has asked for”, said Tuesday’s Indo. Nickey, brace yourself.
Edit: Part 2 now online; you’ll find it here.
