Ask the Tippos and the Carkies
What people fail to see is that these things move in cycles and limerick will come back to the pack. Then the round robin will be grand. There will always be an outlier who are shite though.
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I like that analogy.
Limerick hammering Wexford and Antrim in a round robin instead of Waterford and Tipp isn’t going to make things any better.
These things do go in cycles. Once Limerick era of dominance passes, it’ll most likely be an era of dominance for the hurling County with by far and away the biggest playing numbers, Cork.
The round Robin like just about every change in the hurling championship over the last 20 years stacks the cards further in favour of the strongest. Mini blitz format, matches every week, it’s a war of attrition, all about demographics, weight of numbers and squad depth. The increase in the number of substitutions turning championship hurling and football into 20/21 team game was the precursor to all that.
They was best illustrated really in football where Mayo with the bare 15 would just about have the measure of Dublin for an hour and then Dublin would empty the bench and throw on 5 or 6 subs for the last 10 minutes.
Lot to be said for the old Corinthian rule of no tactical substitutions. Subs only allowed on for an injured player.
This round robin format is a disgrace, it just favours the bigger counties.
It was much better in the old days with pure knock out where Cork and Tipp carved up the best part of 100 Munster titles between them.
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The Munster champion in its current format is not the Munster championship we love and know.
Things don’t really go in cycles. I’d say cork will be fairly dominant after Limerick move on.
You can have a more much more exciting championship and give counties some hope.
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League formats increase the demands on fitness and squad depth.
The scope for the shock is almost eliminated. By the time it comes to the knockout stages, any underdogs will be punch drunk just from the effort to get there.
The championship was all about the shock. No more.
Dublin’s was not the last six in a row we will see. Limerick could easily do six in a row. Cork could do six in a row after that. Kerry could do six in a row in football. There will be plenty of three in a rows and four in a rows at any rate because dominance will come increasingly from structural advantage rather than bare talent.
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Correct. You saw the punch drunk efforts of Clare and Waterford last year in the championship where the players were literally out on their feet.
It’s good to absolutely nobody.
And financial resources.
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One of the bigger positives about the Limerick academy is the selection doesn’t seem biased or weighed towards one club or a few clubs from what I can see.
I would wonder in other counties where say one club is a dominant supplier the knock on impact will destroy the club championship. We already see what’s happened in a few counties but I’d say 5 and 10 in a rows will become more common too at that level.
Well that’s part of it. Limerick got their house in order in terms of structures 13-14 years ago. Those young players eventually came through. They got a good manager, deeply invested in his county. They developed a strong squad, and they got substitute rules that suited them where they could use that strong squad in games. They got a competition format that suited them. They had JP McManus financially backing them. They had access to expertise on their doorstep in the colleges. They got a taste for winning and decided to make hay while the sun shone, and it’s still shining.
When Limerick drop off in three or four years’ time, Cork will probably take up the baton. Once Cork start to win, look out everybody else.
The GAA has already had two periods of obscene dominance recently, Kilkenny in hurling and Dublin in football. Limerick are well on the road to that. Kerry weren’t that far away from a six in a row between 2004 and 2009, only a brilliant Tyrone team kept foiling them. This sort of dominance will become the norm under league systems.
It’s the general predictable nature of competitions which grinds them down. In the 2010s, you knew Dublin would very likely win the All-Ireland in football. You knew their victims in the final would probably be Mayo or Kerry. You knew Tyrone or Donegal would likely be making up the numbers in the semi-finals and Monaghan would probably get to the quarter-finals and be hammered.
You don’t want Lyon winning the French League nine years in a row and then PSG winning 10 years in a row, or Bayern Munich winning the Bundesliga 12 years in a row, or Juventus winning Serie A nine years in a row. Or Celtic winning nine in a row in Scotland. You want competition and jeopardy, on as wide a scale as possible. That’s why competition organisers need to do everything they possibly can to level the playing field. Competition formats are a part of that. You need a competition format that gives you the highest chance the best team will NOT win the All-Ireland. Instead the GAA are moving steadily towards formats which give the best team the best chance of winning. In a less attractive time of the year to attend.
Result: staleness, predictability, general dissatisfaction, low attendances.
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It’d be great to go back to these halcyon days when lots of different teams won All Irelands.
Football is as open now in terms of potential winners as any time in the last 25 years
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Football has at least double the number of counties that compete and that’s huge in terms of competitiveness.
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Galway have won the odd AI title since 1980. Cork haven’t won it in 18 years. Clare now 10 years.
Having said that the last ten years is probably the most different teams to win it in any ten year period. Clare Galway Tipperary Kilkenny and Limerick.
Until Limerick came along AI titles were effectively carved up between Tipp and Kilkenny once Cork had fallen away.
The decline of KK has coincided with the rise of Limerick. Hurling has always been this way.
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Some enthralling arguments here. The format does definitely suit the best team but there’s plenty chance to catch them too if you’re good enough.
If Limerick weren’t as good, we wouldn’t hear this criticism as loudly IMO. The championship expectation is as flat as I’ve ever seen it because of how much better than everyone else they are.
I do agree with the structures point. Limerick will never go 15-20 years without winning an AI again. They’re here to stay. Cork probably won’t ever be in as bad of a state as what we were from 2007 until 2019 (or even until now really) as I can’t see us producing consistently poor minor teams again. We will not see the 90s happen again. Every team that will win the AI from here on will have been coming for years from various underage talented teams and a structure to nurture those players right up to senior.
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Agreed but these other age structures cost mega money and to implement these with out a jp type figure is near on impossible for any consistent period of time.
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They’re here to stay for the duration of this team, and likely won’t be here to stay after that. They’ll continue their period of dominance until they can’t continue it any more, and then drop off. Dublin probably won’t win another football All-Ireland this decade, if they don’t win it this year, and I doubt they will, it wouldn’t overly surprise me if Dublin again went 16 years without winning again like they did before. Kerry and maybe one or two other teams will take up the slack. Kerry will likely win at least four of the seven football All-Irelands remaining in this decade, maybe more. If Dublin can drop off in football, Limerick surely will in hurling, the appetite in Limerick society in general will be sated and the wheel will turn full circle and probably move back to Munster rugby.
The problem isn’t necessarily the dominance of one team, though that is a problem. It’s the predictable nature of the same two or three teams always being there at the business end, even if the same team doesn’t always win it, and then there’s a load of other also rans.
Hurling depends on Wexford and Waterford and Clare and Offaly having hope. That hope has pretty much vanished for Wexford and Offaly and is diminishing for Clare and Waterford after some hard lessons over the last year.
Another thing to be aware of is the generally dissatisfied nature of modern society. We are a much more negative society now than we were 15-20 years ago. Negativity is everywhere, it’s pervasive. It kills hope. Endless repetition from within the GAA of how crap the championships are has helped to make them crap. That very much feeds into attendances and feeds into players committing or not committing. If something isn’t an event, as a society and a floating sporting public, we don’t care. The GAA has decided to take on this idea head on, and they will lose.
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Though another thing to note is how sports administrators across all sports over the last 10-15 years seem to ruin their competitions, not just GAA.
The Heineken Cup was ruined by the spivs. The Cricket World Cup was ruined by the TV money men who didn’t care about developing countries. The Champions League has been and is being ruined. The Euros has become bloated, the World Cup is being mutilated. The NFL in America now admits 14 teams to the play-offs, it’ll probably go to 16 at some point. All in the name of progress, sorry, $$$$$$$$.
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