Cork hurlers would offer more to the championship than Joe McDonagh finalists
Aaron Gillane of Limerick races clear of Ciaran Joyce and Ger Mellerick of Cork. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
IT'S hard to believe it but Cork are out of the hurling championship for this year after a cracking game in the Limerick Gaelic Grounds saw them lose out to the All-Ireland champs by a single point.
You could nearly say that it's ludicrous that the rebels are out, and Carlow and Offaly are still in it. Although ‘still in it’ isn’t 100% correct as the Joe McDonagh Cup finalists haven’t played a single game in the top-flight championship up to now.
No disrespect intended to Carlow or Offaly who produced a fantastic game last weekend, but the winners were sufficiently given a berth in next year's Leinster SHC.
Carlow will get their chance to make the knockout stages next year. Throwing them and Offaly in at the deep end this year though is unfair.
It’s like putting a League One team straight up into the Champions League which makes zero sense.
If you look back to last year's competitions the two qualifiers from the Joe McDonagh Cup lost their preliminary quarter-final matches by 21 and 11 points. If the teams from the secondary competition were equal to those in the Liam McCarthy Cup, they would have been playing against them for the past month.
Letting these two sides into the main competition is the worst kind of token gesture.
It’s illogical that you can qualify for the latter stages of the competition without even playing in it.
The Cork hurlers and their fans are still reeling from the loss to Limerick and still had plenty to offer in this year's championship.
They exit after playing three unbelievable matches, drawing one and losing the other two by the finest of margins.
The average winning margin throughout the eight games was only two points.
If Cork has scored one point in injury time, Tipperary would have been eliminated. Had they scored two more, Limerick would have been out.
Instead, it's the Rebels who will have to do without hurling for the rest of the summer.
Comparing the Munster contest to the Leinster one it is evidently clear that life is much more relaxed.
Leinster games looked like League hurling compared to the full-blooded championship affair in Munster, yet the last eight will contain five teams from Leinster and only three from Munster.
The structure of the competition is basically saying that Cork is not good enough for the quarterfinals because they lost by a single point to both Clare and Limerick. Offaly are good enough because they beat Laois, Kildare, Down and Kerry before losing twice to Carlow.
From this, you can see that it's hardly a level playing field. Leaving the Joe McDonagh cup out of it altogether, the justification for awarding the same number of places to Munster and Leinster looks thinner all the time.
There’s a good reason Munster sides fill the top three places in the current All- Ireland betting.
The temptation to resurrect old sayings about the decline of Cork hurling should be resisted.
Pat Ryan’s Rebels were the victims of an unbalanced system as much as their own shortcomings.
Limerick may well find kicking on for a fourth All-Ireland in a row easier than getting out of the Munster minefield.
It’s easy for Limerick to be optimistic as well when you see opposition like Carlow and Offaly coming down the line.
The difference in the game and how it's played in Munster is worlds apart from the Leinster championship in every aspect.
While you have teams like Cork who will now be finishing their season in May because of how condensed the championship is it almost seems like a double blow to them because of the teams that remain in the competition.
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