GAA chiefs looking to scrap hurling league quarter-finals
The Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) will meet on Thursday to make their recommendations for the 2019 season with an August 18 date for the All-Ireland senior hurling final looking likely.
CCCC chairman Ned Quinn said “at the moment” the hurling decider is expected to take place two weeks before the football final, which has already been pencilled in for September 1. In putting forward his proposal to change the All-Ireland senior championship schedules, former GAA director general Páraic Duffy had envisaged there would be just a week separating the finals. However, it now appears the traditional two-week gap will exist for at least one more season.
The CCCC are again expected to call on Central Council to remove the quarter-final stages from Division 1 of the Allianz Hurling League.
Under Quinn’s predecessor George Cartwright, the CCCC recommended the last-eight element of the competition be done away with but Central Council chose to retain the format as leading hurling counties believed they weren’t getting enough home matches.
However, those counties have since experienced the round-robin provincial championships and there is a determination in Croke Park to decongest what is a busy March. Should quarter-finals be retained, they would take place a week after the last round proper of the divisions on the weekend of March 10 with the semi-finals arranged over the St Patrick’s weekend and the final on March 24.
In the event the quarter-finals are done away with, it’s likely the top three teams in Division 1A along with the Division 1B winners will contest the semi-finals as was the case in 2013. The current league format, in existence since 2012, is expected to be the last of the A and B structure as Congress in February is expected to vote in a return to a more developmental system of two equally strong groups, a format which was in place from 1998 to 2008.
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