I would say that was a once off. This year was shaping up to be very competitive and open with a resurgent Waterford and Clare. Leinster was looking very competitive too.
I think players and fans want more games. One game is a season is not enough. The modern system gives loads of teams chances so there can be no complaints.
Giving loads of teams chances just suits the Teams with huge playing numbers and resources at their disposal. It’s a joke of a set up in my opinion.
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Waterford were in the league final last year and look what happened.
Every panel is the same size.
Is it not better for the like of laois to play 4 or 5 high quality games against good sides rather than one and fuck off back to the mcdonagh, for instance
Small counties like Offaly will never have a 30 man panel to keep tabs with Kilkenny, Dublin and Galway over a 4 week period. If it’s straight knockout you’ve some chance. They’ve ruined the championship. Playing nearly 70 percent of the championship games in 4 weeks to go from 10 teams to 6 and you could nearly name 5 of the 6 at the start of the round robins. It’ll get very boring. Unless you’ve a big money backer it’ll be very tough.
Its not like the knockout days were very good for the smaller countries either. Bar the anomaly of the mid to late 90s, the big 3 dominated for the vast majority of it
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You want these lads to train all winter for the possibility of one or two games?
The money is in the inter county game. Money talks.
The new championship is just survival of the richest. It’ll go like soccer and results will match money invested which is sad for the game in my opinion.
It’s utterly ridiculous the training that’s involved and most of the time the players aren’t even fit. It’s filled with spoofers coaching teams. I’d allow inter county training start the first of March. The money will disappear as attendances will drop off a cliff.
There is a huge appetite for inter county hurling.
There’s barely 7 teams left that are anywhere near competitive.
There was 20 odd years where there were only 1 or 2
All the Munster teams, and 4 of the leinster teams. That’s more than there was for the vast majority of the history of hurling
And that’s an absolute fact. Hurling is absolutely fine. It’s never been in a better place
I think this year’s Munster Championship would have been decent. Waterford & Clare shaping up better than expected. I know Waterford were in a league final last year but in retrospect they had a very, very soft route to that final.
Whatever system you have the Big 3 will dominate. Every change made to the Championship since 1997 has only served to strengthen that level of dominance though. The Big 3 won it 14 years in succession from 1999-2012. The longest unbroken run prior to that was 8 from 1902-09.
Prior to the start of the tinkering in 1997, the straight knock out format in the previous 16 years had threwn up 6 final pairings in 1980-81, 85, 94, 95 & 96 when none of the Big 3 featured. What would most likely have been a novel Waterford v Wexford Final in 2004 turned into a Cork v Kilkenny Final.
2019 saw a final between a Kilkenny side the first to reach a final after losing twice (to Galway and Wexford) and a Tipperary side hammered by 12 points by Limerick in a Munster Final.
just to argue the toss on the Waterford debate, the reached no all Ireland final in the guts of 40 years under old system and reached 2 under the more modern systems in recent history
It’s time to bite the bullet and go to a Champions league format. Fuck the provincial championships as we know them. Use the league to seed teams, four groups of four, 3 games each to decide a final 4. The shadowboxing is unbecoming, hurling wasn’t meant for this rubbish.
Cork haven’t won an All Ireland in 16 years, Tipp will go into a serious decline when the older lads they have go, Kilkenny haven’t won it in 5 years. The big 3 will always be there but the contenders outside that are as strong as they ever have been
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