For a third successive year the tightly coiled hurling league schedules have snapped in the middle. The postponement of two Division 1A matches – and five in total across the divisions – leaves the Central Competitions Control Committee with a problem that they will set about resolving ton Tuesday.
It is expected that the CCCC, faced with five consecutive weekends, taking the league to its conclusion, will simply move the final back – for the third year running – with the result that it will be played on the same weekend as the football final, presumably on the same double bill, as happened last year.
The recurring problems in the schedules have focused attention on the anomaly – in a greatly tightened calendar – of the hurling league’s quarter-final round. Whereas football has reverted to a straight final between the top two counties in each division to decide titles, hurling continues to add a layer of three knockout rounds to the regulation fixtures.
This was originally introduced as largely a financial measure to provide additional gate revenue for hurling counties by giving them extra matches, as the top divisions had been reduced to six, guaranteeing some counties just two home matches.
Football counties already played in bigger, eight-team divisions so it would take the same number of fixtures to win either competition.
Originally most controversy focused on the idea of playing the top four counties in Divisions 1A and 1B against each other even though they were hierarchical groupings and the fifth-highest county therefore was excluded while the 10th went into the draw.
Pat Daly, now the GAA's director of games development and research, was secretary to the Hurling Development Workgroup at the time when new formats were being considered for the 2014 league.
Competitiveness and compactness
His group’s proposal that the hierarchical structure of two six-team divisions, 1A and 1B, be retained because of its competitiveness and compactness with just a top-two final in each division and relegation play-offs for fifth- and sixth-place teams.
"We were happy with the two sixes, two finals and the relegation play-off. That was enough because otherwise you're just replicating what is in the All-Ireland series. We felt that if you have the final and the relegation play-off you could get it in to a narrower window, have more competitive games, and less overlap with the championship."
In the event, another proposal – from the then CCCC – that quarter-finals and semi-finals be added was accepted.
Daly makes the point that this format was adopted even before more recent changes have restricted the time available to an even greater extent. “The league always started mid-February. When you start in January and you’re playing February and March and when nearly every Sunday is essential, you’re taking on the elements in a big way and are going to be lucky to get through that.
“The league final wouldn’t have been played until May but now you have an expanded championship and the introduction of a club-only April has been another constraint so there’s very little room for manoeuvre if anything happens. It’s very hard to have it every way.”
Extensive consultation process
Views on the structure of the hurling league fluctuate. In its 2015 report, the Hurling 2020 Committee said its extensive consultation process had shown that an eight-team Division One “appeared to be the preference among the general public and also the majority of counties we met”.
The report added: "An interesting part of the survey feedback for the Allianz Hurling Leagues found that 42 per cent were in favour of using the league results as the basis for championship seeding. Under the current structure of making the Championship draws in the October before the following year's competition, such a proposal is not an option. However, this may be something to be debated further once the Calendar Year fixtures programme comes in to effect from 2016."
League structure was changed again for this year by mixing up the divisions so that the weaker counties, who previously had access to quarter-finals – those ranked seventh to 10th, ie the top four in the lower division – now have little chance of emulating that.
Despite fears that counties in Division 1B would be extremely uncompetitive, the quarter-finals worked out well and teams from the lower division went on to win the title in three successive years, 2015-17.
Lower-ranked counties
The quarter-finals also played a role in encouraging the lower-ranked counties. Former president Liam O’Neill from Laois was a consistent advocate of the previous system from a developmental perspective, citing his own county’s encouraging summer last year when it won the McDonagh Cup, beat Dublin in the senior championship, and nailed down its place in the current top divisions.
"Last year Laois beat Offaly and drew with Carlow and ended up in the quarter-finals. It was a lovely night to have Limerick in Portlaoise. Laois lost heavily but it was important that we had the opportunity of playing the All-Ireland champions in O'Moore Park.
“We would have struggled to get Limerick to Portlaoise for a challenge match. You mightn’t even ask. I would suggest that the quarter-final against Limerick just might have set us up for a successful summer. I think the quarter-finals were useful.”
O’Neill accepts that the new structure has changed the landscape but believes that weather trends shouldn’t necessarily dictate the structure of competitions.
"I think it's fair to be concerned about the contraction in hurling (competitiveness). Nobody can be blamed for yesterday because you'll get weather like that and even so, Wexford and Kilkenny would happily hurl each other in three feet of water!"
