Published: Friday, 4th September, 2009 9:00am

Jury still out on new structure in senior hurling championship

Kevin Egan Column

After two months of shadow boxing in the Offaly senior hurling championship, purists will no doubt be delighted to see a return to proper knockout action. And with three competitive games down for decision this weekend, KEVIN EGAN examines the new structure that has been used on a trial basis in this year's competition.

This new group structure is the latest evolution in GAA championships and offers teams the opportunity to stay in the championship long after logic would dictate that they should have been eliminated. To take Lusmagh as the obvious example, this season they have played six games and have yet to record a win, but yet they are no worse off than Shamrocks who have won three and drawn one out of their five matches. Indeed for their trouble, Shamrocks must play Seir Kieran this weekend to advance, a fixture which is likely to see them come under huge pressure, while Lusmagh have only to beat Shinrone - a club that Shamrocks despatched with the minimum of fuss when they met, albeit back in May. That's not to say that this will prove easy for Lusmagh, far from it, but it's still a much gentler challenge than the task of taking on the Clareen men.

Tyrone great Frank McGuigan once famously said about early round games when a backdoor safety net was still in place, that he had no interest in going to games where "no team gets bate". Attendances at the round robin fixtures have been of a high enough level to suggest that there is some interest in such ties here in Offaly, but only time will tell if the structure survives if some of the bigger teams start to take advantage of the "everybody qualifies" situation. To take one hypothetical example - if a senior club sustains a lot of injuries, is it really fair to expect them to ravage their intermediate/junior teams in the search for replacements, or are we likely to see clubs fielding retired players to make up numbers, or worse still, offering walkovers? With so little to be gained from finishing higher up the group table, why on earth would we expect clubs to act any differently?

The county board must also pay some attention to the difficulties being experienced by clubs where players are attempting to give equal status to football and hurling. Tullamore, Shamrocks and Ferbane/Belmont are all competing at senior level in both codes with plenty of overlapping players, while teams like St. Rynagh's intermediate footballers and the Clara and Brosna Gaels intermediate hurlers are all still in contention, but nonetheless must operate with several key players expected to give priority to the alternative code. In some situations, most notably in Tullamore where football manager Phil O'Reilly walked away after feeling that his players were not giving his team enough time, the system takes a heavy toll and the damage is visible for all to see.

In the other clubs, the collateral damage is not always as obvious to the casual observer, but is there nonetheless. Many players are physically drained from the demands of serving two different sports, not to mention the considerable psychological impact of simply having no free time left. Managers often think that they are doing enough by their dual players when they allow them to sit out any intense physical work, but forget that even if a player is not operating at 100% while at training, or in some cases is simply present but not togged out, that's still time away from work and family. Worse still, managers wrestle for players' time and co-operation can break down, thus creating divisions in clubs. Of course these have always existed, but this is all the more reason not to create additional pressure.

The system has been taken from Kilkenny, where the structure is perceived to provide players with a good full summer of championship style hurling. Whether Kilkenny's success is in part due to their structure or whether they would still be dominant even if they played their SHC as a one day blitz in January is a separate issue, but one that should not be forgotten either.

In Kilkenny, the absence of a football club championship (which is run off in the spring to clear the calendar), or indeed a county football team that competes in the championship, makes this feasible. In Offaly, this system is exerting some pressure and doing so in a summer where five out of the six county teams exited the championship at the earliest juncture possible. The accusation is often levelled at the county board that they have little or no interest in success, instead considering county teams to be obstacles that must be negotiated. They do nothing to dispel this notion by putting in place a structure that is utterly dependant on none of our county sides seeing any action beyond early July.

This autumn and winter, a decision will have to be taken. Either the county takes the view that dual players at any level is simply not feasible, or else it must pull the reins back in. Either way, the decision must be taken for the benefit of the county as a whole, and with the endorsement of the clubs. If they decide that dual players are a thing of the past to be phased out, then the same structure should be put in place for both codes, and there should be no difficulty in putting a round of club championship football on the same weekend as an Offaly hurling match, and vice versa. After all, if extra championship games benefits a team and their players, then surely Offaly football deserves the same opportunity as Offaly hurling?

Midweek games are an affront to both the players and the supporters of a club, who are expected to down tools at a time when work is both scarce and precious. The old system of one championship game in April and a second in July was a farce that cannot be restored, since club players were then expected to peak at various times of the year, despite still having little or no knowledge of when things would and wouldn't take place. The easy solution would be to fall back on one of these two sticking-plaster options, but this should not happen.

Alternatively, this hurling structure must be scrapped. Removing two teams from the SHC and having two groups of five would perhaps be feasible, provided that only six teams reached the knockout stages, with group winners going straight to a semi-final and second and third place teams playing in the quarters. This would mean that clubs would only play one match more than their footballing equivalents. It would also remove the gulf that could form in hurling, where the senior championship becomes almost like a champions league, while prospective county hurlers at intermediate clubs must make do with as little as three games instead of six.

Of course to reduce the SHC to ten teams would require the clubs to vote for this and the chances of such a vote passing are slim, since it would hurt individual clubs' prospects of becoming/remaining senior. That senior status is something that should be earned on the field, and would mean more if it meant a true elite, often gets lost on clubs.

This new system has been put in place on a trial basis and it could be argued that the trial was successful. People still supported their clubs in moderate numbers, most teams played at or near their full strength throughout, and the county teams obliged by exiting early so as to allow it all to be run off. That said, it would however be a mistake to assume that since this is what happened once, then these are the conditions which will thus prevail in future seasons.

Either Offaly's dual tradition means something, or it doesn't. It's unfair to damage the environment in which dual players live and still expect them to survive, so let's at least offer them the courtesy of making clear whether or not we think the species is worth protecting.