Enjoy the Munster hurling final while you can. Its future is uncertain

FRIENDLY FIRE: Clare and Limerick players jostle each other during the Munster Championship Round 4 match in Ennis. Pic: John Sheridan/Sportsfile

The Munster hurling final is on Sunday. One of the high holidays.

If you’re in the mood for a scene-setter, consider this from Ger Loughnane’s autobiography on winning the Munster final: “We won two All-Irelands, and they were brilliant. But this was unique. People outside Clare would find it very difficult to understand just how much it mattered. This was the dream for every Clare person for decades – to beat Tipperary in a Munster Final.” 

Or this from Kevin Cashman, writing in a Munster final programme some 30 years ago: “To play Tipperary: outsiders will never understand, nor experience, the tremor in the blood that simple phrase brings on. Titles and trophies matter – and All Stars matter just a little – but where Cork stand vis-à-vis Tipperary is the only measure that really matters.” 

Or Limerick manager John Kiely, just this week: “The Munster final is always a very special day. Before I ever got involved (with Limerick) I would have gone to Munster finals that Limerick had no involvement in. I was in Killarney when Nicky English kicked the ball to the net after they beat Cork. He was my teacher at the time but I was there because it was the Munster final . . . I’ve been to (Munster finals) matches where I have seen Graham Geraghty, and footballers from up North, from Tyrone, Antrim, Down and Derry coming down to the Munster final to watch it and to be at it.” 

You get the picture. If there’s one thing that can create a consensus in Gaelic games it’s the Munster hurling final.

If there’s another, it’s the Ulster football final.

Last weekend there were punishment beatings dished out in Leinster and Munster. Connacht was only competitive on the scoreboard thanks to two late Roscommon goals.

But Ulster, a live contest won by two points after extra-time?

As Tommy Martin pointed out this week in his column about that Derry-Donegal final, the hate was visible even at the final whistle: “ . . .(on The Sunday Game) Des Cahill will complain that he was bored and Ciaran Whelan says it’s back to the bad old days and Gooch will say that’s all well and good up in Ulster but it won’t work in Croke Park, no way Jose”.

From high holidays to black mass in a couple of easy steps, then.

The Munster hurling and Ulster football series are the most competitive provincial championships in the GAA but one is held up as embodying the essence of all that’s good about Gaelic games, and the other is an abomination teetering on the edge of an X rating. 

Two provinces produce competitive championships which are keenly contested locally, yet see how the reaction to them ranges so widely. It’s probably better to say that the outside reaction to the Ulster football championship reveals more about the outsiders in question than anything else.

To complicate matters further, despite producing the only competitive provincial championship in Gaelic football, the Ulster football championship is under existential pressure - from some of its own stars.

“It is difficult to know what I would replace it (Ulster championship) with but I have put my cards on the table with this one,” Chrissy McKeigue said during the week.

“Our system’s broken and it needs to be fixed, regardless of how special it was for us Sunday. I still think we can do better with the system and I think we can make it a more attractive proposition and a better model with higher quality games. I know next year, we’re moving towards that, but I would welcome that.” 

That would be Chrissy McKaigue of Derry, who won last Sunday’s Ulster title after a gap of 24 years.

Another team are looking to bridge a gap dating back to 1998 this weekend. 

Clare are hunting a first Munster title since then and the pitch invasion seen in Clones last weekend would be replicated in Semple Stadium, no doubt, if they win.

Would we hear Tony Kelly call for similar structural adjustments to the championship in that case, though?

He may not have to. 

If the death throes of the provincial championships in football were apparent last weekend, the end of the provincial system in hurling can’t be far behind.

The reaction to such proposals is likely to be loud and long, and some of the arguments in favour of retaining the Munster hurling championship are persuasive. 

Southern administrators can point out that abolition would mean they'd essentially be penalised for creating a competitive championship structure; they could also say that failures in other provinces are - by definition - not their responsibility.

Unfortunately, those in the Ulster Council could make the same argument about their own football championship, with the added complaint from them about a shift in the goalposts - Ulster is traditionally criticised on the grounds of aesthetics rather than competitiveness, after all.

The true danger to the Munster hurling championship, however, comes from an unlikely source: the national hurling league.

Limerick, warm favourites for a fourth Munster title in a row, scraped one win in the league, while Clare collected one point more than them in that competition. 

Waterford, league champions, have exited the championship. League finalists Cork scraped through to the next round on the last day of action.

The lesson about priorities could hardly be clearer.

Here is where football and hurling diverge, of course. The national football leagues give teams a serious competition to focus on, whatever their level, as well as an established pathway to real, measurable progress - witness the Limerick footballers in the last four seasons.

However, the competitive integrity of the hurling leagues can’t be weakened much further.

As constituted, the top divisions traditionally include a sacrificial lamb or two the big counties can dismiss at their ease in order to preserve their top flight status: the rest of their games can be used to test out players and alignments, but the example of the Limerick hurlers will not be lost on intercounty managers when they sit down next autumn to plan for the 2023 league.

The Munster hurling final will be a truly extraordinary occasion. It always is. But it’s also part of a competition that’s under pressure, though it’s ironic that the pressure arises from factors as various as one-sided provincial football championships and devalued hurling leagues, unlikely threats that they are. 

Enjoy it while you can.