Sad draw system insult to weaker counties

WHO WOULD be a struggling hurling county?

On the weekend when the opening rounds of the Christy Ring and Nicky Rackard Cup competitions barely merit mention, those counties just below the top level are treated with disdain — even by the GAA itself.

I don’t know if you bothered to watch the ‘live’ draws for the All-Ireland qualifiers on TV3 on Sunday evening, but it didn’t make for pretty viewing.

It’s a great idea, this televised draw, gives the GAA some badly needed exposure at a time when all sports are vying for a little additional valuable prime-time TV slots, creates a little added interest. But the first two draws last Sunday were a real turn-off.

For the first draw there were two sealed balls in the transparent bin — just to ensure we could all see nothing fishy was going on.

All we saw were the two balls side by side in the bin — no random tossing around to ensure a thorough mix-up, no looking over the shoulder to ensure blind reaching into the bin.

This is NOT to suggest, even in the mildest fashion, that the draw was fixed in any way. Quite simply, it could and should have been done better.

The first draw was for home advantage in the Galway/Laois clash, giants against minnows. Which name was drawn first? Galway. Next draw, home advantage in the Waterford/Antrim match, another David/Goliath contest — first name out? Waterford.

I know there are probably only a few people in Antrim and Laois who care about this, but it’s outrageous. Bad enough that Antrim were forced to play Galway in their first outing out of Ulster — 6-21 to 1-10 the final score — but now they’re drawn to travel to Waterford, a 500-mile round trip to play a fired-up team with a lot to prove — in their own backyard.

Laois, hammered by Offaly in the first round in Leinster (who were subsequently hammered by Kilkenny) travel to Pearse Stadium to take on Galway.

What chance Laois or Antrim? This is patent nonsense, obvious to all, surely. Why is it happening?

The draw was a sad sight. The man pulling the balls from the drums was GAA President Nicky Brennan, a multiple All-Ireland winner, hurling’s great white hope when he was elected. Doing the presenting, the estimable Matt Cooper.

How could they make that draw, make those sombre announcements without even an aside on how unfair the system is?

It might be said in mitigation that Matt could hardly embarrass the GAA President on such a night — why not? The embarrassment, surely, is in the system, and it should have been questioned then. Opportunity missed.

OVER THE past several weeks I’ve spoken to the joint managers of the Antrim senior hurling team, Dominic McKinley and Sambo McNaughton. These are two proud men, doing their damnedest to improve the standard of hurling in Antrim, and the overriding impression you get from them is despair at Antrim’s continuing treatment by the GAA in general, by the Ulster council and by Croke Park.

I’m almost afraid to call them in advance of the Waterford match — what can they say? What can I say?

Following that debacle, the next draws were for round three, the crossover meetings of the Munster and Leinster beaten semi-finalists, and here again the favoured teams emerged first from the bins: Cork to meet Dublin in Páirc Uí Chaoimh (perhaps Páirc Uí Rinn?), Limerick meeting Offaly in the Gaelic Grounds.

Again, something should have been done to accommodate Dublin and Offaly, though I’m one of the few who believe that both Dublin, if they can recover from the disappointment of having thrown away a golden opportunity against Wexford, and Offaly, now that they are freed of the sight of the black-and-amber jersey, will test their Munster counterparts.

Whatever about giving home advantage to the perceived weaker teams here, those games should have been played as a double-header at a neutral venue, preferably Thurles.

But that would have been only common sense, a most uncommon attribute in the GAA master fixtures body.

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