Just one piece missing in perfect Munster Hurling Championship jigsaw

Munster GAA chief executive Kieran Leddy believes teams which reach a provincial final should be rewarded with home advantage in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

It would be, in the words of then Waterford chairman Paddy Joe Ryan, “the worst decision in the history of GAA if it happened."

Nearly 10 years later and from a Waterford perspective, the vote to change the provincial championships from knock-out to round-robin was a fateful one.

From a Munster view, it has been spectacularly transformative in appeal and financially. What was feared might be a dilution turned out to be an expansion.

In 2017, the last knock-out iteration in a normal year, the four SHC games attracted a total crowd of 127,992 (average 31,998) and accrued €2.577 million in gate receipts.

Last year, the 11 SHC fixtures including four at smaller capacity venues in Ennis and Waterford, were watched by a combined 329,299 (average 29,936) and reaped €8.381m.

A reaction to the All-Ireland senior football championship’s programme being increased by the Super 8 phase, the Central Council motion at Special Congress on September 30, 2017 barely passed, receiving 62%. Cork, Dublin and Tipperary had provided alternative proposals. Kilkenny asked counties to defer the vote for 12 months.

After it came into being, Munster GAA needed to iron out some wrinkles. In its first year in 2018, Tipperary and Waterford were forced to play four weekends in a row and neither emerged from the province.

A bye weekend was introduced the following year before the third round was split over two weekends from 2022 so that no team played three consecutive games in 20 or 21 days (Tipperary and Waterford endured another hectic schedule in 2019).

“At the start, there was a fair degree of scepticism as to whether it would work,” recalls Munster GAA chief executive Kieran Leddy. “There was a fair degree of concern that it just wouldn't catch the imagination of the public.

“The first year of it, I think the attendances sat around 250,000 including the Munster final. It just seemed to start to take a life of its own then. The success of it has no doubt coincided with Munster teams being very successful in the All-Ireland stage.

“We have the scheduling right now. Counties can now have two successive games at home and two games away or vice-versa but the last thing counties wanted was three games in as many weekends and that sequencing has been taken that away.” 

Munster success is no guarantee for All-Ireland success. Only Limerick in 2022 and ’23 have won both in the six seasons of the group structure. The third-placed team have later lifted the Liam MacCarthy Cup on two occasions – Limerick 2018 and Tipperary ’25 – and the runners-up have claimed it twice – Tipperary 2019 and Clare ’24.

The bottom is the last eight All-Ireland champions have come from the province. “If you come out of Munster, you're battle-hardened to say the least,” Leddy remarks. “I think it is a big advantage to counties now that they're getting a very high standard of championship match.

“It’s actually interesting because it's only a few years ago that was being spoken of as a disadvantage. Most of the teams would be way too tired when they come out and they wouldn't be able to progress on from there.” Practicalities meant the GAA was forced to revert to a knock-out Munster SHC format during the pandemic seasons of 2020 and ’21 but there was never a question of them continuing.

“I think people generally are of the view that the players playing additional championship matches is better,” says Leddy. “That was the difficulty with the old knockout system – one bad day and you're gone.

“I know the football format has changed again but if there weren’t those extra games, hurling would have been completely swamped.

“And I think the reason the Munster championship works is you're guaranteed the two home games and two away games. When Waterford were able to take their home games to Walsh Park in 2019, that evened the playing field.” 

Munster GAA CEO Kieran Leddy, second from right 

The competition’s success has made the Munster Council do things they would never have imagined previously like agreeing with their Leinster colleagues to stage their final on a Saturday evening every second year.

“We’ve had some huge Saturday night games in the championship. That famous Cork-Limerick round game two years ago at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. That was at seven o'clock on a Saturday night and there was a wonderful atmosphere at it, a wonderful atmosphere in the city before and afterwards.

“We’ve had games at six o'clock in Ennis and Waterford on Saturday evenings and they've worked out well. So, we had actually dipped our toe in the water.”

The missing ingredient for Leddy is incentivising the Munster SHC final for both teams. The winners’ reward is obvious in the form of an All-Ireland semi-final but he was disappointed to see the proposal to give quarter-final home advantage to the provincial runners-up wasn’t supported at the last Central Council meeting.

“I'm very much in favour of the provincial beaten finalists having a home advantage in the quarter-final. If you get to the provincial final, you should surely have some advantage over the team that finishes third. As things stand, you don't. Both end up in the same position.

“So, the beaten provincial finalists and the third-placed team both end up in a quarter-final at a neutral venue two weeks after a provincial final. And for me there's a certain unfairness to that. I'd certainly be proposing that we either come with an actual Congress motion for that next year or indeed go back to Central Council to reconsider it.

“Look, I understand there was some points made about certain stadiums not being big enough. That's exaggerated in my view. It's no reason whatsoever not to give the provincial finalists a home advantage.

“In fact, we've seen over the years not many quarter-finals double bills have actually sold out or even come near selling out. Most of them tend not to.

“So, you can't be making a decision based on the fact that some year in seven or eight or whatever, you might end up with a quarter-final in a smaller stadium. That's no reason not to do it. We already play lots of matches in smaller stadiums.

“So, I certainly think the system does need that tweak. You should confer advantage from first to second to third finishes in the provincial championships. That's the way it should be.” 

Numbers-wise, can it get any better for the Munster SHC? Leddy feels the championship is at peak performance. “Oh, I'd say we're there. I think it would be hard to go beyond where we were last year. How long we kind of hover at this level just remains to be seen.

“These things work in cycles. It’s great that our teams are competing for All-Irelands but in 2011 both of our semi-finals had around 16,000 at them. The good times come and go for competitions. I have no doubt it will be the same for Munster hurling but it’s good at the moment.”