The so-called losers’ group section of this year’s All-Ireland senior football championship has clearly been a great success. One of the side-effects of this has been to push the hurling championship into the shade. This is a pity, as we have just had one of the best Munster championships of all time, but already this is fading from the popular memory due to the gluttonous weekly fare of excellent football games we have treated to on our television screens.

There has still been no adequate explanation as to why the losers’ group was not also introduced in the hurling championship this year, and An Moltóir suspects that there are many in Croke Park who are now kicking themselves at this slip-up. Just to get an idea of what both the GAA and the general sporting public missed as a result, An Moltóir ventured off into fantasy land and devised his own hurling losers’ group competition based on the system which is to be introduced next year.

This system provides for the first round and second round losers in Munster and Leinster going into the hat with Galway and the losers of the Ulster final for the first round of the qualifying competition. Thus, on the basis of this year’s results, the teams involved would have been Clare, Cork, Waterford, Laois, Dublin, Offaly, Galway and Down. An Moltóir put all these into a hat and came out with the following fixtures: Down v Waterford; Clare v Cork; Laois v Offaly and Galway v Dublin.

Obviously the Clare/Cork clash is the juiciest of these fixtures. Assuming neutral venues are used, this game would go on in Thurles and could be expected to draw a crowd of in excess of 30,000. Unable to call the result, An Moltóir put the two teams in a hat with Cork emerging victorious. Of the other games, An Moltóir had Waterford graciously conceding home advantage to Down and winning comfortably before a couple of thousand spectators; Offaly dumping Laois in Nowlan Park before maybe 5,000, and Galway romping home against Dublin in Tullamore before a similar attendance.

The next round sees the beaten provincial finalists in Munster and Leinster coming in with the losers’ group first round winners. This time, An Moltóir’s hat produced the following fixtures: Wexford V Galway; Offaly V Waterford; Cork V Limerick. Now things are really building up, with Wexford’s legions of supporters boosting the Semple Stadium crowd to 30,000 for a Saturday evening game, and 40,000 turning up the following afternoon for a double bill of the remaining games in the round. An Moltóir gave Galway the nod in the first game but put the others in a hat, with Offaly and Cork emerging as the lucky victors.

This brings us to the quarter-final stage, with Ulster champions Derry going in with the three survivors from the losers’ group. This time An Moltóir’s magic hat came up with Derry V Galway (coincidentally, the same counties will actually meet in this year’s quarter-finals) and Cork V Offaly. This Croke Park double bill would attract perhaps 25,000 at most (Cork and Galway being poor travellers at this stage of the competition and Offaly and Derry having a small hurling population base). With Galway likely to win their game, and Offaly coming out of the hat for the other game, this clears the way for the semi-finals, which turn out to be Tipperary v Galway and Kilkenny v Offaly. Readers can make up their own minds about how things would go from there.

A couple of overall reflections on how this hypothetical version of the losers’ group would have gone. Firstly, of the first round losers, only Offaly got through to the semi-finals (with Offaly’s recent experience of the back door, one would not bet against this happening in the real world!). Secondly, the losers’ group generated a number of attractive extra fixtures and over 100,000 more paying customers contributing in excess of £1 million to the GAA’s coffers. Thirdly, the participation of the Ulster finalists in the competition was essentially as sacrificial lambs. It is possible that Down would have been in with a shout if they had drawn Laois or Dublin, but that surely is as far as they would have gone, and notwithstanding Derry’s brave show against Offaly last year, in reality bringing in the Ulster champions at the quarter final stage offers them little hope of further progress.

Finally, the proposed losers’ group structure holds no place for the losing participants in the Leinster championship round robin (Meath, Kildare, Westmeath and Carlow) or the losing Ulster semi-finalists (including Antrim this year). Leaving them out in the cold will do nothing for them. The intermediate championship does provide a fallback (although the Ulster teams do not appear to be involved this year). In the long run, An Moltóir favours separate open-draw championships for the top ten counties and the next ten or so, run on a round-robin system (divided into two groups each). However, if the losers’ group structure does have to be tried first, then it should be broadened out to involve as many teams as possible.

One suggestion would be for the Ulster championship and intermediate championship (including the losing Ulster semi-finalists) to be run off early (in May/June) with the two intermediate championship finalists qualifying for the first round of the qualifying competition along with the losing Ulster finalists; these would go into the draw with Galway and the losing first round and semi-final teams from Leinster and Munster. This gives ten teams in all, with the winning five going in with the Ulster champions and the losing Munster and Leinster finalists for the second round. The four teams emerging from this would play in the quarter-finals, with the winners going into the semi-finals with the Leinster and Munster champions. Apart from allowing more counties to participate in the qualifying competition (and giving the intermediate participants an added incentive to do well in that competition), this proposal would also bring the Ulster champions into the system earlier (and more meaningfully).

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