GAA not playing it fair with Westmeath and Kildare
For these two teams, it’s their All-Ireland final, because lose and they won’t even be in next year’s All-Ireland championship.
You would think it’s a no-brainer, what’s the biggest hurling game of the coming weekend?
On another week Wexford v Dublin would be a contender. There’s a mini-resurgence going on in the south-east. The U21s beat Kilkenny well last week. The seniors are now organised under Liam Dunne, fit under Gerry Fitzpatrick and inspired by their new forwards coach, a guy by the name of Liam Griffin. Sky were never going to get a shock in Nowlan Park but they might get one in Wexford Park if Dublin are any bit off.
But that game has to be overshadowed by Cork-Clare. Last year’s two All-Ireland finalists, both have shown in their last visit to Thurles that they’ve probably pushed on again this year.
Of course it’s the game we’re most excited about this weekend. But that doesn’t necessarily make it the biggest game.
There’s a strong case that honour has to go to a face-off between Westmeath and Kildare on Saturday afternoon in Tullamore. Think about it. Clare lost to Cork in last year’s Munster semi-final. It was hardly the end of their world. They were still in the Liam MacCarthy Cup, that year and the year after.
For Saturday’s loser in Tullamore, however, it will be the end of something: a journey, a dream.
Whoever wins is in next year’s Liam MacCarthy Cup. Whoever loses, isn’t. You could hardly call it the £100 million game like they tend to call the English Championship play-off final in Wembley, but it’s actually hurling’s equivalent. For these two teams, it’s their All-Ireland final, because lose and they won’t even be in next year’s All-Ireland championship.
You would think so, given the stakes both teams would get a suitable lead-in to such a pivotal game, to help them prepare and be suitably focused and fresh.
Not so.
Kildare are after playing six weeks straight in the Christy Ring. Only last Saturday they won the Christy Ring Cup. They should have been able to celebrate winning the Christy Ring. But no, seven days later they’re expected to get up to an even higher pitch to win Liam MacCarthy status.
“The whole system is set up to stop the emerging counties from progressing,” their manager Brian Lawlor would remark after Saturday’s great win over Kerry. And it’s hard to argue with him.
Certainly Westmeath can empathise with him. Eight years ago they were playing in the Liam MacCarthy Cup, having won the Christy Ring the previous year. They acquitted themselves well too. They knocked Dublin out of the Leinster championship. They drew the second half against Kilkenny the next day out, in front of a big crowd in Mullingar. They also hosted and challenged a terrific Waterford side. But inevitably they finished bottom of their qualifier group, meaning they had to play a relegation play-off, funnily enough in the same place where they play on Saturday, Tullamore.
They would manfully hold Dublin to just 16 points, but it being their third game in 14 days, they would score just eight points themselves. Injuries and fatigue caught up with them.
Westmeath hurling has never really recovered. They would win the Christy Ring Cup again the following year — beating Saturday’s opponents, Kildare, in the final — but knowing that it didn’t feature the reward of promotion back to the MacCarthy Cup. I actually did a couple of psychology performance sessions with the team that 2007 season and it was a major challenge for them knowing no matter how well they played in that year’s Christy Ring, they’d still be in it again in 2008. They would eventually regain their MacCarthy Cup status in 2011 but by then they had lost a lot of the better players and the momentum of 2006.
The least they deserved in preparation for that play-off against Dublin was a fortnight’s break. Every All-Ireland final team gets at least that. And Kildare deserved that for their All-Ireland.
Eight years on from Westmeath’s dilemma and the powers that be have done nothing to acknowledge the plight of such teams, and the magnitude of such games. If anything, things have got worse. The aforementioned 2007 Ring Cup final between the two counties was played as a curtain-raiser to a Kilkenny-Wexford All-Ireland semi-final. It was in August. It was on live TV.
These days the Christy Ring final isn’t played before a big Liam MacCarthy game. It’s not live on TV. It’s run off by the first Saturday of June, something to be run off quickly, to get out of the way, an inconvenience.
Hurling is a summer game. It is also, as hurling review forum chairman Liam Sheedy has said, a game for all of Ireland. Right now that is not the case. It was this time last year Dónal Óg Cusack touted the concept of a Team Ulster. It is needed all the more now. The Ulster championship starts this weekend but teams are no longer training for it. A top hurler from Down or Derry wants to be playing against the best, or at least on some stage. Things need to change.
The tokenism has to stop — though giving Kildare that extra week would have been one token greatly acknowledged.
