Munster counties threaten boycott ahead of draw

Never mind the dust, the stout is barely settled on the 2013 season and already it’s time to turn our attentions to 2014. At 7pm tonight on RTÉ Two, the draws for next year’s football and hurling championships will be made. Never mind that Sam Maguire and Liam MacCarthy have barely seen the inside of a school yet – swirl the balls around the bowl and away we go again.

Already, we have the first row of next year’s championship. In response to the Munster Council’s nakedly commercial decision to seed their football draw and keep Cork and Kerry apart until the final, the players from the other four Munster football panels last night issued a statement declaring they will not play in the 2015 championship unless the seeding arrangement is reversed.

"Waterford, Clare, Tipperary and Limerick senior football panels would like to formally express our serious disappointment at the Munster Council's decision to seed the Munster SFC 2014 without any consultation with county squads," said the statement which was signed on behalf of their respective squads by Waterford's Shane Briggs, Limerick's Seanie Buckley, Tipperary's George Hannigan and Joe Hayes of Clare.

“We are aggrieved that this decision, which seriously disadvantages our counties’ provincial championship prospects, was also taken without certain counties being properly mandated to vote. As a form of immediate protest against this decision, and respecting the views of our squad members, the four squads have asked their counties to withdraw from the 2014 McGrath Cup. Also we will be asking our players to consider not making themselves available for the 2014 Railway Cup football series.

“Players from the four squads will then convene a meeting before the National League 2014 to assess the situation going forward. All four squads are also united in saying that if the seeding arrangement isn’t reversed next year through the formal channels that the current panellists will not participate in the 2015 Munster championship.”

The statement is clearly timed with tonight’s draw in mind – a championship draw which, as ever, seems to have come around with indecent haste. The fact that there have been replays stitched onto the last two hurling finals obviously makes it feel that bit closer to the end the season than it would in a regular year but even so, it always feels like something of an afterthought. A bit of Any Other Business to be dealt with before we slope off into hibernation for another winter. There are reasons for it, clearly. The GAA’s master fixture list is such an unwieldy and incomprehensible beast and the dread process of taming it can never start too early. There are six draws to be made tonight – four in football and two in hurling – and it isn’t until the provincial secretaries complete their respective needfuls that everything else can begin to be jig-sawed in around them.

Ulster doesn't seed counties, which means anyone can be drawn to play in the preliminary round. In Leinster, Dublin will be one of four seeded counties as defending provincial football champions, along with Meath, Wexford, and Kildare – and will thus go straight into the quarter-finals.

The Leinster hurling draw will be more interesting this year than it has ever been, with Dublin the only seeded team and neither Galway nor Kilkenny guaranteed a place in the semi-finals.