Back to business with draws for provincial championships

A WEEK later than planned the draws for the 2010 provincial championships will be made this evening in Croke Park and shown live on RTÉ Two (8.25pm).

The format will be much the same as last year, when the Leinster hurling championship was the focus of attention because of the addition of Galway and Antrim for the first time.

And this year, there will be an added interest because of the participation of Carlow, who were last included in 2004 – when they were hammered 4-19 to 0-8 by Laois.

Their involvement comes about as a result of winning the Christy Ring Cup (for the second consecutive year) and, more pertinently, because of the approval of Special Congress recently.

This had to be specially convened following a ruling from the Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA) that ‘a mechanism’ be found to accommodate them – after Westmeath steered through a motion at this year’s Congress that the Christy Ring Cup champions should be given an ‘automatic‘ right to play in the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

Again, Kilkenny have been given a bye through to the semi-final, which means that they won’t know their opponents until all of the (three) quarter-finals have been played. And, because of an uneven number of teams (7) there will have to be a draw for a preliminary round.

In the Leinster football championship, the four semi-finalists this year – Dublin, Kildare, Laois and Westmeath – will be kept apart on one side of the draw. On the other side, there will be three games to determine the quarter-final pairings and one of the seven will get a bye.

As usual in the Ulster football championship, there will be one preliminary round and four quarter-finals, while the two rounds of the Connacht championship are pre-determined. Galway will play New York and London will be paired with Roscommon. Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim will go into the hat to produce the third pairing and one of these teams will have a bye into the semi-final.

It’s as-you-were in Munster, with one quarter-final game and two semi-finals in hurling while in football, there will be two quarter-final games – with the remaining two teams given byes to the semi-final.

It will be recalled that the Munster Council (controversially) adopted a seeded draw in the 2008 championship, with Cork and Kerry being kept apart. However, that was abandoned after just one year and an open draw was re-introduced for this year’s competition. That resulted in Cork and Kerry being paired on the same side for the first time in five seasons.

Cork played Waterford and Kerry got a bye to the semi-final. As predicted, it enhanced Limerick’s chances of getting back to the final (not without difficulty), when they lost narrowly to Cork in Pairc Uí Chaoimh.

Cork and Kerry had met in the previous four finals.

As ever there will be a lot of interest in the draws, not just among players and managers (especially those newly-appointed) and supporters abroad will be able to follow the draw on the RTÉ website (www.rte.ie).