Thanks, chaps. I couldn’t figure out why 2B Meath were in it ahead of the others I mentioned. But they won Christy Ring last year to get the slot, didn’t they?
They did, there was a big fuck up over the time keeping and the game was replayed IIRC.
EDIT, it was scorekeeping
1 Like
Championship stutters into life
Ewan MacKenna
April 24 2017, 12:01am,
The Times
For many people there was only one big hurling game over the weekend. A league final to lay down a marker, a place where the road that meanders across summer starts. The irony of course was that for many in hurling, their summer did actually start and almost nobody knew, never mind cared.
During the past couple of days, 70 per cent of counties that field senior teams began their championships. There were the four in Leinster deemed not good enough and are shunted down the sidings into a qualifying group. Meanwhile, 20 of the 21 sides in the lower tiers might as well have been derailed altogether. Speaking to one of those below the top deck, he laughed and said, “Had I not been playing I wouldn’t have known it was on.” He wasn’t joking.
In Kildare, for Mark Moloney, this is nothing new. They may have beaten Mayo in their Christy Ring opener but the direction of the competition has left an itch that can’t be reached. He recalled the excitement at the introduction of the format back in 2005. “It was a great idea. We thought we were finally getting a fair deal — a full summer of games against teams of our level. It was almost perfect. At the time it was announced, there was talk of sponsorship and the possibility of playing games before Liam MacCarthy games.”
Yet by 2014, when Moloney and Kildare won it, they were forced to play six times in as many weeks and then were thrown in the next week against Westmeath to earn promotion. Out on their feet, they lost.
Two of the managers with a realistic chance of winning the Christy Ring Cup this time spoke in the lead-up and it wasn’t about their fixtures but the competition itself.
Kildare’s Joe Quaid complained that “realistically it’s not a championship; it’s a tournament played over seven weeks, which is a pity. It’s mad really. It’s a case of playing it and getting it out of the way. People that get to the finals, the latest they’ll be playing is June 10 and the Leinster Championship won’t have even started”.
Antrim’s Sambo McNaughton also put it into perspective, alluding to the fact they could be finished for the year before having had even the light for a full evening training session.
That in itself is a pity but the greatest pity of all is that those in the Ring, Rackard and Meagher Cups are the real heroes. It’s relatively easy for Michael Ryan to step out on the biggest days and keep his cool and for Davy Fitz to step out on the biggest days and completely lose his. That trite term “great hurling people” is reserved for their ilk but the greatest are those in the shadows. Therefore this is not a national sport but a minority sport. For those who don’t like that, their ire ought to be directed at the situation rather than the statement as the only way to grow it is to get away from the failure of the current approach.
With some things you need to see to believe and in recent years, having pucked around with the Leitrim hurlers during a session and spent the day of the 2012 tier-four final with Fermanagh, there’s some talent and a lot more passion. This matters as they care. It’s why huge strides have been made despite the ignorance of the forgetful masses. From Carlow and Westmeath to Kerry and Meath, there haven’t been so much as small steps but giant leaps made.
Back in the 1990s, a league game between Kildare and Armagh in Naas had to be stopped as the sliotar got lost — but look at those two now. And look elsewhere. Less than a decade ago Naomh Colmcille was the only club in Tyrone with a pitch dedicated to the sport but now they are in the middle of an ambitious five-year plan to grow the game right across the county. Derry city has gone from a hurling wasteland to a success story. Even at the bottom, Cavan are back competing.
Nobody is saying that all counties put in the time and effort they ought to, and nobody is saying those that do could challenge the best even in the longer term. But remember that Offaly didn’t reach an All-Ireland final until their 94th try and think of what they brought to the game in terms of colour and passion and achievement in the decades after. Hurling people from major counties get accused of snobbery. Yet they aren’t snobby towards other sports, instead they can be snobby towards the greater good of their game.
As is so often the case, the evidence can be found with the money trail. Look at it this way, where Dublin have had €1m a year since the mid-2000s to fund coaches, back in 2013 it was announced that Antrim, Carlow, Westmeath and Laois would have €900,000 to split over five years – just €45,000 a year each, or barely enough to hire a development officer. The rest meanwhile were expected to divvy up €100,000 between them.
Cahir Healy may not be in the lower-tiers but, in the Leinster qualifying group with Laois, he understands the divide. “On the money pumped into Dublin, I don’t begrudge them their success but it annoys me when I hear the GAA need a strong Dublin,” he said. “Why do the GAA need a strong Dublin more than a strong Laois, a strong Down, a strong Kerry? Like I said, it’s great Dublin hurling has risen, and I believe because it was a massive urban centre it became a priority. But I am from Portlaoise. It’s a huge urban centre and there are loads like it that need help. Funding and expertise together could be transforming.”
Healy spoke about “this Super 11 nonsense and growing the game abroad when we can’t grow it here”. And there are other examples. When it came to the Sky TV deal, those who run the association talked about the international market but where is the priority to grow their flagship game across much of the domestic market? If hurling was a business you’d imagine that the development and improvement of weaker counties should be crucial as it would be to the benefit of everyone.
“I would like to see a day where there are several hurling coaches in each of the weaker counties going into every single school and exposing the children to the games,” added Moloney. There have been small steps like the Celtic Challenge and this is the first that Kildare colleges competed at under-14 level in Leinster which was an important, progressive step. But mostly it remains the same.
“The most annoying phrase that gets said to me is, ‘Do they have a hurling team?’ I hear this regularly. To me, that statement speaks volumes. It tells me of how well the GAA promote our game. How would your average person know that every county has a hurling team if they never see or hear of them in mainstream media? You have to actively go looking for it if you want to find out a score or a match report often. In 13 years of the lower-tier competitions I can remember only one launch, in 2015.”
“Do they have a hurling team?” He’ll be hearing it plenty more, even after the weekend when most of the country burst onto the championship scene, but were kept out of sight and out of mind.
2 Likes
good piece
the greatest insult of the whole thing is when they have a “triple header” on a saturday afternoon in june and play the finals of these competitions at an empty croke park to get it over with so no one can see it or know it exists
i still dont know why they dont play these games before say a munster or leinster final or an AISF instead of those awful minor or even worse intermediate games that they persist with …
is it the choice of the counties tho? do they have any say in the scheduling
maybe they’re happy with having the whole thing wrapped up by june
how does promotion / relegation from Liam Mac to christy ring work this year?
is it by default the ring winners play the bottom placed team of that leinster qualifier in a play off?
I believe it was Nickey Brennan in his infinite wisdom who moved the finals back to June and moved them out of Croke Park rather than as curtain raisers in August. A terrible decision
Assume as most of these counties are football dominated the county boards are delighted that the hurling team is wrapped up by the June bank holiday weekend and they don’t have the added expense of paying for physios, gear, food, transport, organise pitches etch for an extra 10 weeks if they played til the middle of August and a possible knock on effect to club games.
It is a shame really.
He was / is teaching up in blackwater cs and did a bit with cappoquin AFAIK but not from a hurling background at all from what I’m told, dunno how he wangled his way into a senior intercounty set up though
The Evening Herald are reporting that Paul and Mark Schutte won’t be making themselves available for Dublin this season.
Cunningham must be a nightmare to work with. Seems to fall out with a lot of people.
Himself and JBM didn’t talk for a finish either and JBM a hard enough man to fall out with I’d have thought. Club mates too
1 Like
Am I reading this wrong or have Laois and Westmeath played an intercounty Championship game on a Wednesday afternoon?
You’re reading that wrong. They played last Sunday.
But dont feel bad, no one else noticed the Championship started last weekend either.
1 Like
Old news. The Hedild must have been reading Reservoir Dubs
Chris Bennett won’t be available either
2 Likes
Kieran Bergin has left the Tipperary panel.
At least everything hasn’t gone mad.
The date on this article is today’s and it refers to “this afternoon” which caused my confusion. But it actually says “updated” on 26 March.
Writing was on the wall for him when he didn’t get a run last Sunday. Apparently was leaving at the end of last year but management asked him to stay on. Got married recently as well.
Is that the Jesus-botherer?
4 Likes
Lovely that the marriage referendum came just in time for him.
Huh?