THE MUNSTER SENIOR Hurling Championship has only started and there is a whiff of jeopardy.
Clare and Cork, through a combination of first round defeats and some unfortunate scheduling, will meet this weekend in the most severe of circumstances. The round-robin format has not run so frequently to provide a foolproof data set, but the implication of back-to-back losses in your opening two games is clear enough: you should probably start thinking about next year.
Cork upset the theory in 2022, it should be said. But even that had as much to do with Tipperary going winless and Waterford going only one better. We’ve yet to see what Liam Cahill’s Tipperary have to offer in 2024, but it seems unlikely that the same luxury will be extended again.
In a sense, it is precisely this limited room for error that instills such excitement in every game that’s played. Over those first seven days in April, counties can as readily set themselves up for a run through the summer as run aground. And if the five counties concerned are even fairly close in comparable quality (see 2018), the entertainment supersedes anything else on offer.
This is the magic of the Munster championship. And it is, in another sense, its curse.
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The GAA has never been regarded for its flippancy where the inter-county championships are concerned.
For over a century the same basic format existed in both codes: winner stays on until someone has the trophy in hand. One defeat along the way was all you were afforded. The cut-throat nature of it resulted in any number of great footballers and hurlers playing maybe one or two championship games in a given year, but the measure of success was more closely tied to perfection.
How could you call yourself the best team in Ireland if another had beaten you along the way?
The introduction of the qualifiers in 1998 broadened things out a little, however, and that idea of perfection has been incrementally diluted ever since. There’s scarcely been an overwhelming change in the number of counties who tend to win All-Irelands, yet you are allowed a certain amount of leeway now to get yourself right after an initial setback.
While Gaelic football seems locked in a perpetual debate about how best to increasingly level the playing field, the hurling championship has hit on something that mostly works. With fewer counties to cater to at senior level, the introduction of the round-robin format in Leinster and Munster, particularly, has unquestionably elevated the All-Ireland competition as a whole.
With the positive possibilities of change in mind then, what is there to suggest that even greater modification might not provide a more spectacular outcome? When the product of what we are witnessing is this good, why should we limit it so?
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The primary cause for change rests with this weekend’s game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
However exciting the Munster championship is as a whole, there’s an inherent flaw in the system when one of Cork or Clare could be all but finished for the year after seven days.
The meritocratic argument would suggest that any county which loses two games doesn’t deserve to still be in contention, and that’s not entirely wrong. Additionally, the annual changes to the schedule doesn’t necessarily mean that this will be a regular occurrence. Indeed, this is the first time since the introduction of the round-robin that two teams who lost their opening games in Munster will play one another on the second weekend.
This exception should be the cause for revision, however.
At the root it, Clare or Cork will be punished for potentially losing two games against two of the country’s best teams. If Cork happen to defeat Clare on Sunday, Brian Lohan’s men will have had their year determined by one loss to the five-in-a-row chasing All-Ireland champions and another to a Cork team fighting for its life in an exceptionally tough away game.
Meanwhile, Kilkenny and Galway in Leinster, after tune-up games against Antrim and Carlow respectively, will play one another this weekend safe enough in the knowledge that their passage to a provincial final (and the possibility of an All-Ireland semi-final) will not be determined by how they fare in their toughest game of the round-robin series.
On the one hand, these circumstances are what makes the Munster hurling championship a far more attractive prospect for viewers. But realistically, one of Dublin or Wexford will likely progress to the All-Ireland series while two better teams in Munster ultimately sit it out until next year.
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The greatest challenge is of course the relative sanctity of what is on offer in the province.
If a situation was constructed whereby a Munster championship, much like the four provincial championships in Gaelic football (with the slight exception of Ulster), was deemed so incidental that a county could lose three or four games and still have some route into the All-Ireland series it is plausible that the value of winning it might be compromised.
Consider the Leinster hurling championship as a warning. A touch fewer than 25,000 people attended last year’s final between Kilkenny and Galway in Croke Park. On the same day, the Munster final attracted almost 44,000 as Limerick took on Clare in the Gaelic Grounds.
Precisely because the Munster championship is so competitive, winning it outright has tremendous value. But when you consider that it remains a means through which counties can qualify for the All-Ireland series, that same competitiveness is ultimately detrimental to the championship as a whole.
There is no easy solution to this issue. But if one All-Ireland contender’s year can be determined by a bad week in Munster while their Leinster counterpart faces no comparable threat, something is fundamentally wrong no matter how exciting it may seem in these opening days of the championship.
