KILKENNY STAR RICHIE Hogan has expressed major reservations about the current structure of the hurling championship.

In an interview with Newstalk’s Off the Ball, Hogan compared hurling unfavourably to “the top sports,” explaining that “they’re all more or less all league-based whereas ours is championship-based”.

“To be honest with you, I don’t like the system at all. I hate it,” he said. “I’d rather play games every two weeks.

“You don’t have a choice. It gives lads with injuries a chance to prepare, but we don’t really think about it, we just prepare for the next game.

“Players want games… It has disadvantages in that you wait five weeks for a game

“It’s a hard thing to change because of tradition, but from the players’ point of view, you want more games and less training.”

When asked about possible alternatives, Hogan suggested “an NFL sort of system” featuring “10 or 12 teams in the Championship and two groups of six — each team plays each other twice — abolish the league and go through to a knockout”.

He continued: “If Kilkenny are playing Dublin, it’s about the rivalry, it’s not about the Leinster Championship or the league.

“It’s something I doubt will be addressed in the near future.

“Our club players will go maybe 10 weeks without a game, which is ridiculous.

“But it’s easy for me to sit and talk about it — I’m not making the fixtures.”

Hogan also spoke about his much-discussed blistered feet, after the star tweeted a photo of them following Kilkenny’s defeat of Waterford.

“The feet are great, actually,” he said. “They were particularly bad the other day.

“I was wearing special blister socks. I cut the top off my normal socks and rolled them down over and it made it worse actually. But they cleared up after a couple of days

“Croke Park is very hard. No matter what you do, you’ll get blisters. The other fellas are the same — your feet are on fire.”

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