Nope itâs common occurrence thanks to the split season.
There is no justification for the preliminary comps from what I can see.
Better just to have a league and no semi finals / finals.
At least thatâll give you a space between league and championship then.
Iâd put the Leinster and hurling on different weekends so at least weâd have some bit of hurling every weekend for two months at inter county level.
Last year nobody new Galway and Kilkenny were playing one Sunday afternoon.
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Even though thatâs a spelling mistake it sort of works.
Sensible points.
The split season has compressed/squeezed the intercounty season but there are still 3 competitions - pre-season, league & championship. And all 3 (three) competitions are pretty much run on a league/group/round robin basis so thereâs a glut of ongoing games.
And any gobshite with basic knowledge of sporting activities that require some combination of endurance, speed, power, sharpness (e.g. hurling, football, boxing, running) knows you need to periodise & peak at certain points. You canât sustain top level performance for an entire chunk of months.
So to use that oft used GGA phrase, teams will TARGET games at specific points & then back off again. Youâve alluded to Limerick nearly catching themselves out early in Munster last year by going all the way in the league & not phasing their training properly. I think they had fuck all interest on Saturday & were happy to ease off & take the 4-week lead in on their terms rather than have another fixture half way between now & start of the championship.
With such a squeezed calendar now, the split season has served to make the league even less meaningful & reduce the quality of the games in doing so. Itâs also brought parish pump style cute hoorism to the fore, as everybody is suspicious of everybody else, nobody knows whoâs actually trying from game to game & it all seems as rigged & absurd as horse racing.
Managers will also need to adapt & acknowledge squad rotation is here to stay - itâs like football twenty years ago when the traditionalists wanted the best XI named for every game but the volume of fixtures with short turnarounds between games meant even professional athletes couldnât sustain playing every match. And managers that flog players will end up with them getting injured & risk missing the entire championship because, again, itâs condensed. So the big counties with more depth will have an innate advantage here too, as managers have more scope to rotate the squad.
Overall, I donât think much, if anything at all, can be read into the hurling league in particular. You can probably pick out a few basic bits on general playing style, tactical set up etc but teams will be completely different animals in another month or two.
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I think the Munster one week, Leinster the other makes a lot of sense. Can be alternated each year
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The worst thing of all is both Munster and Leinster finals on the same day. They should be separate Sundays.
Itâs killing hurling.
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Itâs genuinely difficult to watch one game if youâre attending the other. Not often but occasionally Iâd have attended both in previous years, particularly when I lived near Croke Park.
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They need to do away with the stupid Round Robins really.
On Sunday April 21st this year there are 3x Leinster Round Robin games and 2x Munster Round Robin games taking place. Its saturation level stuff.
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None of those are ever fixed particularly for 2025.
There will be such a fuss over a Munster final on a Saturday itâll end up on a Sunday.
Waterford played cork in a replay under lights in Thurles and there was some shit storm over it.
No I disagree. The Munster round-robin was excellent last year. Got an average crowd of 27k (excluding the final). Be a mad move for the GAA to do away with something that successful.
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Twas only voted in at congress in November so theyâll have to try get one full cycle before scrapping it 
Maybe @gaillimhmick or @Keadyshouldhaveplayedin89 coilf confirm but the Leinster final in 2022 was a Saturday evening and it had a very poor attendance. Same fixture got a bigger attendance.
I was at the 2021 & 2022 Leinster finals, they were both on Saturday nights.
To be fair, itâs hard to get too excited about Leinster finals full stop (although last yearâs was very exciting). Galway havenât tended to travel in big numbers to Leinster finals since they joined Leinster. Even the 2012 one where they hammered the shit out of Kilkenny only had just over 20k.
You probably need a Wexford team with a bit of momentum behind them to really get the crowd in.
I reckon they should move them out of Croke Park but I know that will never ever happen.
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The 2023 final was Sunday sorry.
With the crowds theyâve been getting lately, Kilkenny and Galway could play them in Nowlan and Pearse Park but I doubt the Leinster council would like the final played in Galway.
Even Thurles would make more sense
Personally, Iâd stick it in OâMoore Park and sell it out.
Some people might miss out (itâs one of those things that demand would probably go up as tickets are harder to get) but youâd create a better atmosphere & probably a better game as a result.
Nothing worse than a quarter-empty Croke Park, just murders the atmosphere.
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Yeah itâs a terrible TV product too.
Bono clearly had a deep appreciation of the finer points of GAA culture because he quite obviously wrote this song about Kilkenny v Galway Leinster hurling finals.
Iâd have no issue if the only senior inter county hurling fixture in Croke Park was the All Ireland Hurling Final. An All Ireland semi final in Thurles or Cork would be epic.
Notwithstanding the dimensions and especially the surface in Croke Park seems to really suit Limerick.
OâMoore Park is criminally underutilised. Handy for everyone and the surface was excellent this weekend. They should getall the Leinster Hurling Finals clearly.