There are several possibilities. I will put up mine. I think it would be a positive if hurling did not start until mid ro late March. Would give players more of a close season.
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February is probably the busiest month of the year now for hurling. Absolute bonkers. Itâs a summer sport. The championship should only be starting now.
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You could start a ten team championship on March 29 and still be finished on July 19. Eight rounds and then knockout.
A4 versus B5 and A5 versus B4 in relegation semi finals/first round.
Quarter finals (a week later â to give some advantage to top three finishers): A1 versus winner A5/B4; B1 versus winner A4/B5; A2 versus B3; A3 versus B2.
Semi finals (two weeks later).
AIF (two/three weeks later).
You could also go straight into quarter finals, with A5 and B5 heading into an immediate relegation final.
Waterford had 5 or 6 of their starting team tied up on Club duty until the end of January who were then rightly given a few weeks off but they then only had a few weeks together as a full panel before the blitz style round robin kicked off.
Very difficult to prepare a panel properly in those circumstances.
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Bonkers. 4 championship games crammed into 5 weekends from 19 April to 17 May and Waterford season is over.
The split season and microwave championship is doing some serious harm to hurling in Waterford.
Waterfordâs six National League games were fixed for seven weekends between January 25th and March 8th too. The last one was pushed out a week to March 15th because of the sad passing of Mikey Kielyâs dad but the scheduling is simply bonkers like you say.
All stacked on top of the Club Final where half the panel was involved and Fitzgibbon Cup stuck in the middle of it too.
The players love the split season they say.
Intercounty hurling from a fans perspective isnât enjoyable fare anymore.
According to who?
Fans, lots of them.
Why do so many pay to go see it so?
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Na Piarsaigh had their 6 panelists only joining up with the county in early April 2018, didnât do LK any harm that season in the initial round robin that started a mere 6 weeks later, the stark reality is WD are just not good enough, in 7 RRs they havenât qualified once.
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Theyâre a county of whingers. I always had them as my âif my team didnât win, Iâd love to see them do itâ team but the recent whinging about the system, which literally couldnât be much more of a meritocracy, is jarring on me a lot.
One of the first championship matches I was ever brought to was in 95, when Tipp beat them by 20 odd points. It was in the middle of a five year run where Waterford went out after one championship game. One and done.
Now, Waterford get four games against huge hurling superpowers every year, guaranteed. Two of them at home. They couldnât have dreamed of that a few years ago. Get on with it. Get better and win a few. They arenât that far away
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Yet in the last five championships which were not round robin - 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2021, Waterfordâs performance was as follows:
2015: All-Ireland semi-finalists
2016: All-Ireland semi-finalists
2017: All-Ireland finalists
2020: All-Ireland finalists
2021: All-Ireland semi-finalists
I donât think itâs simply a case of them being just not good enough in a general sense, because they have consistently done well in non-round robin championships. I think itâs a case of a round robin format fundamentally changing the nature of what a championship is.
Waterford donât have the depth. That can be masked somewhat in a championship where games are on the day and spaced out more but itâs harder in a round robin format with games coming thick and fast.
Waterford have also made a few managerial appointments which havenât worked out.
The wheel will turn.
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Not in Leinster they arenât. Itâs fine if youâre in the gilded four in Munster who all border each other but outside of that not so great.
It will. We will be in Waterfords position in a few years and Iâm looking forward to all of the calls to keep us in the championship despite losing all our games
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Tipp have loads of depth and have been fairly shite in the Round Robin era as well
Like Limerick for 40 years?
That was before the split season where Limerick played two championship games in 2017 and Na Piarsiagh played their 5 provincial/All Ireland Club games across 5 months. Na Piarsaigh also had nobody starting in that first round robin game and Mike Casey was the only player to crack the starting 15 that year.
Its nigh on impossible to do Club and County anymore in this split season/microwaved season era.
Con OâCallaghan has been fucked since Cualaâs run last year. The Dingle lads arenât at it at all for Kerry now. Neither are the Brigids lads for Roscommon. Glass and Ethan Doherty have forgotten how to play football since they got burned out by Derry/Glen. Adrian Mullen has been plagued by injuries between Kilkenny and Ballyhale.
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There are different dynamics at play in every county but the observation I would make living in Waterford for nearly 20 years now is that the split season/microwave championship has done huge damage to hurling in the county.
From 2002 to 2017, Waterford made 11 All Ireland semi finals in 16 seasons so they were hurling well into August in each of those years. That keeps hurling to the forefront of the public consciousness, kids are focusing on very little else sports wise over the summer holidays. A huge amount of Kilkenny and South Tipperary folk holiday in Waterford in Tramore, Dunmore East and all along the Waterford coast. Thereâd always have been a great buzz around the place with hurling championship talk over the summer months. Thatâs all gone now.
Waterford would have had a solid enough support even in lean times, but the level of support and interest in the county hurling team has fallen off a cliff in recent years. Peter Queally touched on it in his post match interview yesterday, the damage that all this is doing to the development of hurling in the county playing off their championship crammed into 4 weekends in late April, early May.
There are obviously other factors at play. If you had a vibrant club championship, you could drum up interest in that, but that doesnât exist with the scale of Ballygunner dominance.
Soccer is huge in Waterford as well. Outside of Dublin, Waterford is the county has provided the greatest number of Eire soccer internationals. The move towards summer underage soccer with the GAA moving away from its place on centrestage as the summer sport will really bring things to a head over the next few years. You see it year in year out now, some of the best underage hurlers in the county packing it in to go off chasing a cod of a dream in the Waterford United academy.
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