The proposals for the hurling championship put forward by the Hurling Development Committee - if accepted - should provide some interesting ‘divarsion’ along the road to the inevitable open draw…

The focus on retaining ‘meaningful’ provincial championships continues to restrict the
development of hurling as a national game. The decisions to base competitive structures on provinces and counties was made in the late 19th century at a time of primitive transport facilities and low general living standards. In the long run, these were to prove inherently inequitable, given the huge differences in county populations and the number of counties in each province. A further complication in the case of hurling was the
very uneven development of the game nationally.

Now, as we enter the 21st century, we have a typical situation where organisational bureaucracies have lost sight of their original remit (the development of Gaelic games) and are simply concerned with their own self-preservation. The Munster hurling championship is undoubtedly a good sporting competition, but is its continuation in the broader interests of the game of hurling?

The huge audience which is clearly available for the game are interested in variety as well as quality. The provincial championships (like divisional championships within countries – another organisational bastion) are claustrophobic and repetitive, and do nothing to promote the game in the weaker counties. I f we have to retain them, they
should be run as separate competitions (in place of the National Hurling League?) from an open-draw All-Ireland series based on a round-robin system.

But, assuming we will have to wait a few more years before the messianic messengers wrest control of the GAA from the stick-in-the-muds, we should at least give the proposed new system a trial as it is clearly a better alternative to the present championship structure. It is certainly a flawed system, not only in requiring a randomly selected county to play an extra round just to give Galway a second game (if necessary), but also in excluding the Ulster teams which fail to reach the provincial final. While it is likely that these teams would get hammered in the open section of the championship,
excluding them completely is likely to do less for their hurling welfare.

As with the back door, the proof of the proposed new system will be in the eating. Apart from giving Waterford a fleeting moment in the limelight in 1998, the back door has left a feeling of indigestion in its four-year trial period so far. The national ‘meeja’ have so far failed to tease out the ramifications of the new proposals, except to lamely list in alphabetical order the first round of the open draw section which would have emerged on the basis of the 2000 championship.

An Moltóir therefore has been working his way through an imaginary open draw based on that championship. He has had to make some assumptions - mainly that the All-Ireland final will still take place on the second Sunday in September and that all earlier rounds will take place on a single weekend with fortnightly intervals.

Thus, based on the 2000 championship, the semi-finals would have taken place on the weekend of August 27, the quarter-finals on August 13, the second round of the open draw on July 30, the provincial finals on July 16, the first round of the open draw on July 2, the provincial semi-finals on June 18 and the first round of the provincial championships on June 4. Such a tight schedule is required in order to give county championships some breathing space. As it is, the inter-county championships are far too drawn out.

On the basis of last year's championship, we already know the eight teams which would have gone into the first round of the open draw. An Moltóir put these into a hat and came out with the following line-up: Limerick v Dublin; Clare v Wexford; Waterford v Laois; Galway v Antrim. The questions then arise: should these games be played in neutral venues and should they be played as double bills? If the main objective is to maximise public interest, then a Limerick v Dublin and Clare v Wexford double bill in Thurles makes a lot of sense. An Moltóir foresees a 30,000 crowd and wins for Limerick and Clare.

A double bill of the other two games in, say, Croke Park, is unlikely to generate much interest, so the alternative scenario sees Waterford playing (and beating) Laois in Nowlan Park before an attendance of 8,000 and Galway agreeing to concede home advantage to Antrim in a home-and-away agreement which sees the Tribesmen winning in Casement Park before a small crowd of, say, 3,000.

With Tipperary and Offaly coming into the draw for the second round of the open section, An Moltóir drew the following fixtures from his hat: Offaly v Tipperary; Waterford v Galway and Limerick v Clare. An Moltóir reckons that the best arrangement here would be for Limerick to play Clare in the Gaelic Grounds on Saturday, and for the other games to go on as a double bill in Thurles on the Sunday. Likely attendances are envisaged of 30,000 in Limerick and 45,000 in Thurles. The winners, on the toss of a coin (these games are all hard to call): Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary.

This paves the way for the quarter-finals, with Derry coming in at this stage. This time, the draw from the hat gives us Limerick v Derry and Waterford v Tipperary. As usual, these go on as a double bill in Croke Park. It is hard to see Derry prevailing against Limerick, but a toss of the coin gives Tipperary the other semi-final place before a combined attendance of 45,000.

Limerick and Tipperary then go into the hat with the provincial champions, Cork and Kilkenny, giving the following semi-final lineup: Cork v Tipperary and Limerick v Kilkenny. If Cork agreed, both games would go on in Thurles on Saturday and Sunday (Cork, as 1999 All-Ireland champions, getting the Sunday spot). Attendances in the region of 50,000 are estimated for both games. Otherwise, since no other ground would hold the crowd, the Cork v Tipp game would go to Croke Park (again, on Sunday). On the basis of how the championship actually panned out in 2000, we predict a Cork v Kilkenny final, with the Cats doing the business this time.

This arrangement gives twelve games outside the provincial series (with a total predicted attendance of around 325,000), as against just five under the present system (total attendance 150,000). This would certainly generate plenty of public interest, with lots of mouth-watering clashes. Under the proposed system and An Moltóir's draw, each county which started the championship would have got the following number of games: Down and London (1 each, excluding New York); Antrim and Derry (3 each); Clare (3);
Waterford (4); Cork (4); Limerick (5); Tipperary (4); Galway (2); Dublin (3); Laois (2); Wexford (2); Offaly (3) and Kilkenny (4).

As things worked out notionally here, the new system wouldn't have done a whole lot for the likes of Laois, Antrim, Wexford and Galway, with Limerick and Waterford being the real winners. However, on the grounds that no county ended up worse off, there is a clear net benefit to the system.

One significant drawback is that provincial champions (Cork and Kilkenny) would be left with a six-week wait for their All-Ireland semi-final game. This is based on the tight schedule proposed by An Moltóir and is likely to involve an even longer delay given the GAA's penchant for drawing things out. One possible solution for this would be to bring all three provincial champions in at the quarter-final stage, in a seeded draw against the five winners of an open draw section including Down and London as well as the eight other first round entrants listed above. This arrangement still give twelve games outside the provincial championships, but involves one round less (i.e. two extra weeks for the county championships). It would spread the bene