Munster Championship too good for its own good

Happy New Year to one and all and we bring you some good cheer with the news that Davy Fitzgerald and John Mullane recently made their peace.

Tue, 01 Jan, 2019 - 00:00

John Fogarty

Happy New Year to one and all and we bring you some good cheer with the news that Davy Fitzgerald and John Mullane recently made their peace.

Bygones were made bygones with a handshake at a social function in Waterford and six years after their unfortunate exchange on the Kinane Stand sideline the two hurling greats are on speaking terms again.

Chatting to Mullane last week, he posed a Rubik’s Cube of a question — predict the finishing positions in this year’s Munster Senior Hurling Championship.

You can give it a go but the chances are you’ll be uncertain of your choice, especially when it has been suggested by venerable quarters that the reigning All-Ireland champions Limerick might not finish in the top three.

Anthony Daly’s remark is not silly in the slightest. This time last year most wouldn’t have had Tipperary, kingpins of two years previous, and Waterford, runners-up the season before, ending up at the bottom of the heap. The Déise won’t feature in a lot of people’s top three but to write them off would be unwise regardless of where their two home matches will be played. Páraic Fanning is just the type of no-nonsense character Derek McGrath felt was needed after he stepped down.

County chairman Paddy Joe Ryan is so convinced of success that he declared back in November:

The main thing, let me finish by saying, I am in my 14th year next year and we are going to win the All-Ireland next year. Not that it could happen at all, but f.....g will happen. I’ve said it will happen.

Liam Sheedy’s return has already restored a lot of confidence among Tipperary players and supporters. He is saying all the right things, identifying issues in the team that many of their followers have been bemoaning.

Saying things like “we feel physically we are little bit behind some of the other teams in terms of our conditioning so we’ve a few tough weeks and months ahead of us” is what the fans want to hear.

John Kiely has been speaking of his Limerick players hitting the reset button and saying “2019 could be even more special”.

Given how severely the Clare pair of Donal Moloney and Gerry O’Connor analyse their own performances, their decision to stay on was a statement in itself.

Cork can’t keep letting their Croke Park history repeat itself but they know how close they are.

So to come back to Mullane’s puzzler, who is going to give? Or will the competition itself give?

Why? Because it’s too good.

Daly referred to it last week as “a bearpit”. It is the equivalent of Division 1A to Leinster’s Division 1B but the prize for topping each is the same. Mullane himself claimed last May the cutthroat nature of the Munster SHC meant it was likelier that a Leinster team would go all the way.

Just because Limerick did doesn’t defeat his argument. Where Limerick were taxed by their high volume of games earlier in the summer, the same applied to Galway towards the end with back-to-back replays.

What lends to Mullane’s belief is the woeful record of Munster champions in All-Ireland semi-finals and the round robin structure only exacerbates that issue, considering how more arduous winning Munster has become.

Tipperary are the only county since 2006 to win an All-Ireland semi-final after claiming the provincial title (2009, ‘11, ‘16). Not since Clare in 1997 has a Munster team other than Cork and Tipperary won an All-Ireland semi-final after being crowned provincial victors.

As for going on to do the double, the record reads Tipperary (2001, ‘16) and Cork (1999, 2005). Before anybody mentions this period coincides with the Brian Cody era, only twice have Kilkenny beaten the Munster winners in a last-four game - Tipperary in 2012 and Waterford in ‘04.

Heavy lies the crown indeed and for years the gap, roughly around six weeks, between the two matches has been blamed. The point regularly made is the similar break didn’t upset Kilkenny or, as was the case, Galway in 2017 (incidentally, it was reduced to four weeks last year as will be the case this year). But the stronger suggestion is that Munster expends too much of those who conquer it.

Last summer, the average winning margin in Leinster was 7.75 points to Munster’s 4.64 points. It’s not to say Leinster isn’t a fine competition and the contest should be fiercer in five months’ time but it’s not Munster.

The TV people know that too. If, as Mullane’s former colleague Ken McGrath said, hurling owned summer 2018 then the southern province can claim most of the shares.

RTÉ showed seven of the 11 Munster SHC games, with Sky Sports broadcasting the Cork-Limerick cracker in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. RTÉ televised just three non-final provincial football games and Sky none (it’s appropriate that RTÉ are replaying 10 of the best 2018 Championship games over the festive period while their two football offerings are nostalgic).

Limerick manager John Kiely during the Munster GAA Hurling Senior Championship Round 3 match between Cork and Limerick at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

There are a multitude of derbies the Ulster SFC draw has thrown up to consider and there will be interest in Dublin’s five-in-a-row bid from the get-go but both companies will strive for more hurling. More Munster hurling, to be precise (it appears the Cork-Waterford Round 4 game on June 8 will be shown live on Sky).

Of the 421,000-plus that attended the provincial games last year, almost 250,000 was provided by the Munster fixtures. Take away the 25,102 that were in Semple Stadium for the Galway-Kilkenny Leinster final replay and Munster contributed almost 63% of that combined attendance figure.

Given the competitiveness of Munster, those figures will be just as healthy this year irrespective of a reduced capacity Walsh Park joining the stadia rota.

Yes, the Munster SHC is a jewel all of its own but there are already indications it might be becoming too precious. If more and more of its champions continue to fall by the wayside after running what has become an even greater gauntlet, there will eventually be calls from inside the province for Munster winners to be given some form of preferential treatment in the All-Ireland series.

Don’t think that will happen? Think again.

You need only look back to the 2017 Special Congress to see how Cork, albeit unsuccessfully, tried to ringfence the Munster SHC’s five participating counties. Seeing now what the competition provided last summer, might delegates reconsider?

When it has never been so valuable, it would only make sense to enshrine it by elevating its status in the Liam MacCarthy Cup?

In claiming the Munster cup these past two seasons, Cork beat all the other four competitors, are eight games undefeated and won under knockout and round-robin structures, but their credibility as undisputed kings of Munster has been questioned by those subsequent losses to Waterford and Limerick.

Those are two of the eight times in the last 20 years Munster counties have put their provincial champions out of the All-Ireland SHC. It can be argued that the statistic illustrates the strength of the Munster SHC but now survival is outgrowing glory as the only objective in it.

What also poses an issue for the six-week long competition is the difficulty the restructuring of it and the rest of the Liam MacCarthy Cup has presented for clubs.

So frustrated by effectively losing their summer to the inter-county scene, Kilkenny clubs have overwhelmingly supported a motion to next month’s Congress to push the All-Ireland finals back to September so that club matches can be played in the best weather months.

Last month, Tipperary competitions control committee secretary Tom Maher remarked:

I do shudder to think what will happen when Tipperary reach an All-Ireland senior hurling final and or go further in the senior football championship.

Tipperary’s championships, particularly in hurling, are bloated and outdated. All the same, it was an astonishingly frank statement to make.

What was just as stark was a comment made to us by a former GAA president towards the end of last year that for all the magical inter-county hurling played how the season is formulated simply can’t continue because of the negative impact it is having on clubs.

Whether that means an even more condensed inter-county season or one, as Kilkenny are calling for, extended so as to allow club activities, there are going to be changes.

On the surface, it would seem crazy to think the Munster SHC format might be altered again but when clubs and those who succeed in it are suffering it might just have to.