Hurling prepares to take retrograde step

On Gaelic Games
It's a decade since the first All-Ireland championships were run on a non-knockout basis. The original "back door" system came into being for the 1997 championships and allowed the beaten provincial finalists in Munster and Leinster re-entry to the All-Ireland stages.

Given the chopping and changing that has taken place since, it's easy to forget the huge departure this represented at the time and the fuss it caused. You can argue that you only get to dilute the purity of knockout once, and after that it's merely a matter of degree, but at this remove the reform looks a minimalist measure, readmitting just two teams to the championship.

It was surpassed in scale within five years by football's qualifier format, which handed second chances to all counties and has greatly expanded the appeal and depth of the championship.

Hurling has, however, been unlucky. The current variations on the qualifier format would have suited the game terrifically well 10 years ago, when Offaly, Clare and Wexford tied up the MacCarthy Cup for half the decade with Limerick agonisingly close and Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary all still competitive.

Everyone knew that state of affairs wouldn't endure forever, but it has been a disappointment the extent to which the old caste system has re-imposed itself on the game, with the Big Three exerting an unprecedented grip on the All-Ireland in the period since knockout was abandoned, despite some genuinely competitive and exciting championship matches.

Cause and effect? The fairer and better organised the system the greater the chance of the best team winning out, and that has undoubtedly been part of the explanation. But the main reason is that the very counties whose burgeoning fortunes in the mid-1990s constituted the Golden Age are now largely impoverished.

Clare and Wexford have been capable of good, once-off displays, and have each made semi-final and, in the former's case, final appearances. The latter have managed to add a Leinster title to their roll of honour, but an All-Ireland was never on.

All of this was in the future when the GAA met in the unusual surroundings of the Royal Lancaster hotel in London (the local GAA were celebrating their centenary) for the 1996 congress. There was a genuine sense of excitement about the issue and uncertainty over the outcome.

But the reform package had had the advantage of being the first of its type to receive proper promotion and explanation. The previous year, advocates of reform had stood appalled as a whole raft of ideas had been shot down almost casually by delegates, many of whom exhibited no signs of being familiar - let alone conversant - with the topics under discussion. So it was decided that the next package had to be better explained and sold to the counties.

One of the central figures in the process was current GAA president Nickey Brennan, who two years previously had delivered an urgent speech to the 1994 congress in Cavan, stating that hurling was "in crisis".

He was subsequently - if not consequently - named as chair of the Hurling Development Committee, which produced the proposals that were accepted in London.

It wasn't an easy sell. Patiently explained as a means of introducing greater promotion for hurling by adding an All-Ireland quarter-final stage and thereby creating two stand-alone semi-finals rather than the double bill, the blueprint provoked strong reactions, mainly to the disappearance of the purely knockout format.

Even players were unsure about the reforms. In a vox pop conducted in this newspaper, then Antrim player - now joint-manager - Terence McNaughton expressed outright opposition to the move: "I believe it would make a farce of the All-Ireland championship to allow two teams who lost at provincial level back in. If you are beaten, you are beaten.

"However, I would be in favour of a seeded open draw, with, say, the eight Division One teams in the league, seeded into the second round."

Cynics might say that the loss of the Ulster champions' automatic access to All-Ireland semi-finals might have influenced McNaughton, but his views on the matter were commonplace outside of the province as well.

But the idea prevailed and fulfilled what was intended of it by giving hurling a second big day in August, and not noticeably damaging the provincial championships: in the first year Leinster recorded its biggest-ever semi-finals attendance as well as a record final crowd.

It's accordingly ironic that, under Brennan's presidency, the championship format is to take its first regressive step in 10 years. At next month's congress the latest alteration - virtually guaranteed to pass - will see the Munster and Leinster champions advanced straight into the All-Ireland semi-finals.

The past two seasons have seen four quarter-finals, played on two double bills, featuring the best teams in the country. This format has suffered from the shallow competitive depth of the championship, but it wasn't contributing to that inadequacy.

The two rationales are that, after two months of championship, virtually no one had been eliminated and that the season was effectively beginning in late July and so undermining the provincial championships - with all Munster teams virtually certain of their last-eight place - and, secondly, that the provincial winners deserved recognition of their status.

A further consideration was that the two round-robin groups were as predictable as death, but addressing that didn't necessitate junking the quarter-finals.

As for the other arguments, they are just the latest examples of how the provincial championships continue to be the greatest obstacles to devising a fair and symmetrical All-Ireland series.

Automatic semi-final places benefit established counties and the recent system was introduced to counter that. Only three years ago both Waterford and Wexford suffered because of having to go straight into the semi-finals while Cork and Kilkenny got more game time, and this was an influence on changing the championship.

The other side of the coin is that established counties - historically more likely to win their provinces - do benefit from direct entry to semi-finals because they have fewer matches to play and greater experience. It's true that Cork and Kilkenny have won the two All-Irelands under the quarter-finals system, but they didn't do so because the system made it easier for them; both years each of the last eight teams went to the same starting line.

Why should the provincial championships, only one of which is truly competitive, distort the fairest way to decide the All-Ireland?