Munster GAA shelves proposal for August All-Ireland hurling final

Munster counties have also informed the executive they are not in favour of having four All-Ireland quarter-finals

Kieran Leddy: “The feedback from the six counties is that they would prefer the calendar to be left as it is." Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Munster GAA will not be forwarding a motion to stage the All-Ireland senior hurling final in August following further consultation with its counties.

The council had floated a proposal for a later conclusion to the Liam MacCarthy Cup because of promotional concerns around inter-county hurling.

However, counties have advised them they are satisfied with the July finish to the inter-county window. They also informed the executive they are not in favour of four All-Ireland quarter-finals either.

“We met with all the counties last week,” Munster GAA chief executive Kieran Leddy told the Irish Examiner. “County secretaries and the county game managers were there as well because we had a long agenda but one of the items on the agenda was the season structure.

“The feedback from the six counties is that they would prefer the calendar to be left as it is. In other words, they don't want to pursue an August hurling final.

“As far as we're concerned, we're obviously not going to propose this if the counties are not supporting it, so we won't be doing anything on it at this stage.” 

In June, Leddy said shifting the timeline of the hurling championship to finish in August was “the first and the easiest fix” for the game. However, he added the council would “absolutely respect counties' view on that because they're the ones that own the club championships.” 

They spoke in favourable terms about the current schedule. 

“The view of all the counties was that the club championships are very vibrant at the moment," explained Leddy.

“We’ve had a very good year this year and very exciting and well-attended championships across the province. The view is why diminish that by moving the All-Ireland final by two weeks.

“We can appreciate the fixture programmes that they're running now is huge and they are played in a tight enough space. You really only have August and September and we're now at September 14 and evening games are starting to become very difficult, which kind of pushes everything into weekends.

“And they're all running various forms of round-robin championships as well, so it does make it difficult for them to deal with less time, we'll accept that.”

The idea of four quarter-finals is a non-runner for counties too, says Leddy. Calls for a fourth county to emerge from Munster are not supported.

“The view is there would be far too many games to eliminate counties from the championship and we have seen how football tried that in the group stages and the public lost interest.” 

On the experimental hurling rules, Leddy welcomes the two-point sideline cut and is interested to see how the limit on successive hand-passes will fare.

“It is absolutely worth trialling these rule changes as they're doing. The one thing the FRC (Football Review Committee) showed us was the importance of running these trial games and testing what’s working and what’s not.

“I'm certainly a big fan of the two points for the sideline cut. I think that's a particular skill that should be rewarded. It's a phenomenal skill to put a ball on the ground on the sideline and strike it over the bar. That's the same score at the moment as when a fella is tapping the ball over the bar. I think that's one certainly worth pursuing.

“They are trying to tidy up the hand-pass rule, which I think is universally accepted as an issue that needs to be tackled. I'd be saying let's trial them and see how we go.” 

On Friday, Munster GAA revealed there was a 4% increase in adult championship activity across July and August. A total of 1,538 games were played between Gaelic football and hurling, up 59 from 2025. Of that number, 970 were hurling and 627 were football.

The totals per county were Cork 419, Tipperary 369, Limerick 302, Waterford 207, Clare 171 and Kerry 129. It’s the third year the province have tracked the games.

“The number of games sustained that are relatively constant and very impressive,” said Leddy. “If we didn't have the split season, I'm not sure we could play the volume of club games intertwined with the inter-county season. I'm not sure it would be practical or possible.”