Classic clashes cloud over fixture farce at underage
The other grades added to the tapestry and bonhomie of it all. Waterford winning their first minor All-Ireland in 75 years. Limerick winning their first Munster minor championship in 29 years. The hurling Clare served up in winning their third U21 All-Ireland in four years. Throw in Antrim’s shock U21 win over Wexford, Carlow’s over Dublin in the same grade, as well as the Laois minors’ progression to a Leinster final, and the underage game offered up its share of shocks and romance as well.
And yet we can’t avoid the feeling that it could have been better, that, like most GAA competitions, they could be structured better, that there was something too random about how it threw up its finalists and even champions.
You could not begrudge Waterford — both team and county — their minor All-Ireland success.
As Gerry O’Connor, the gracious as well as hugely successful Clare U21 joint manager, pointed out to this column a few weeks ago, Waterford have probably the best and most consistent minor programme in Munster over the last five years.
In 2009 they won the provincial championship through the backdoor. In 2010, 2011 and 2012 they won their first-round match each time and beat every one of their Munster rivals at some point.
But in 2013 they did not win their first-round game. They didn’t win the Munster final either — in two attempts. They were beaten twice this year. Yet they are now All-Ireland winners.
Contrast that, say, with Tipperary’s minors. William Maher’s team beat Waterford by six points in their opening game in Munster this year — in Waterford. But when they lost to Limerick in their next game, their summer was over. No second chance for them.
It would have been even crueller had Limerick lost that day. That was their first game of the championship. Had they lost in Thurles there wouldn’t have been a second game for them, the double-edged sword of getting a bye into the Munster semi-final.
The Munster Council has understandably come in for some heat for how they’ve reintroduced a seeding system for the senior football championship, though until there’s some kind of secondary competition in the All-Ireland series, we can’t ever see a satisfactory and appropriate competition structure for Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford at senior level in the big ball code.
The Munster Council needs a more equitable competition for minor championships. One that doesn’t leave teams feeling their first-round wins were worthless and disadvantageous, one that guarantees a proper programme of games for every team and one that isn’t happy with a random provincial or All-Ireland champion.
The structure of the All-Ireland U21 championships are also hugely flawed. The grade is supposed to be a developmental competition, yet in both hurling and football it is run on a straight knockout basis, half its teams getting just one game.
In hurling it is ridiculous that Antrim and Galway both continue to essentially get a bye to the All-Ireland semi-final; that every third year they can play one another in their semi-final; that they can win just one meaningful game and they’re through to an All-Ireland final.
As magical as days like last Saturday were for Clare hurling, days and match-ups like it were also farcical, exposing as balderdash the polite consensus that Antrim were there on merit. The danger is it will be left to a provincial council or a more national body to make a tweak or two to these competitions. Like Galway and Antrim being allowed into Leinster at U21. Munster having a round-robin at minor. As if these provinces and competitions are independent republics, just as the Football Review Committee will report back this autumn with no obligation as to how its proposals might impact hurling and the larger GAA ecosystem.
There needs to be a wider, holistic review of fixtures and competition structures. A mega, high-power committee conducting a mega review and devising a master competitions programme for the next 15 years. It’s a monstrous task. As Paraic Duffy pointed out to us during the summer, with so many players playing on multiple teams, we won’t find something to satisfy everyone.
But we can be doing a lot better than the way we have it now, where club players don’t know whether America or home is the better bet of getting in some decent championship fare in the summer; a young fella in February has to juggle Sigerson and U21 with national league in trying to establish himself on the senior county team; and we have major underage finals where it seems any old pairing will do.
