John Fenton in favour of hurling format good but feels schedule is too tight

Cork hurling legend John Fenton believes that the current provincial round-robin system is working well but feels that it is being squeezed into too short a timeframe.

Midleton and Cork star Fenton, who captained the county to win the centenary All-Ireland in 1984, was speaking at the launch of the 23rd annual Circet All-Ireland GAA Golf Challenge, which takes place at Killarney Golf & Fishing Club in October.

Though the move away from the knockout championship may not be to traditionalists’ tastes, Fenton feels it has been a good development. However, he would like to see it have more time to breathe.

“Well, I would be in favour of keeping the round-robin,” he says, “but we have to stretch it.

“It’s absolutely crazy that there’s so many games compacted into such a short space of time. It’s very unfair on the players, it’s very unfair on the spectators and it’s not giving hurling the promotion that it deserves.

“We were just talking about it there this morning, for people going to games week after week after week, the cost of it is enormous. There are players now who are starting back training again in November when they should be resting up.

“The hurling season shouldn’t be starting until May and then, whatever system that they come up with, it should be May and push the finals back. The compacted season is certainly not working and very unfair on the players.”

The current calendar allows Cork to begin county championships at the end of July, with finals played in mid-October. GAA President Jarlath Burns cited Cork and others needing 14 weeks to complete their club schedule as a factor to consider in pushing back the inter-county dates. Fenton admits there’s no easy fix.

“It’s a very, very difficult situation,” he says, “because last year Cork were out of the championship early enough, then an awful lot of Cork players just went over to the States to play their hurling.

“It’s going to be difficult but it can be done. Whether it means going back to a more streamlined version of the inter-county system or maybe even the club system – put the club system… maybe instead of a group system maybe have a home and away in the games, at least teams would then get two matches.

“You could play a team at home one weekend and away the following weekend in championship and maybe that might slim it down a little bit. Or, maybe just we have too many competitions and maybe slim it down that way as well.”

Before any real discussions on the changing of the format, the current season must be played to its denouement.

Cork are of course still standing, albeit without having hit the heights in wins over Offaly and Dublin. Fenton feels that the lowering of expectations ahead of the All-Ireland SHC semi-final against Limerick might help Pat Ryan’s side.

“I think they would probably have preferred to have performed better,” he says, “but the main objective of the last two games was to get over the line and in many ways I suppose it will lessen the expectations going into the semi-final

“I think they would have preferred, at least outwardly anyway, to have had better performances but, look, they did what they had to do and they have a big test now the next day so we’ll see how that goes.”

Saturday’s game against Dublin was unusual in that it started at 1.15pm. Fenton could not be present at FBD Semple Stadium, but he is not in favour of the move being repeated.6

“I wasn’t there because I’m chairman of Midleton and our club was in the Féile finals below in Wexford so that’s where I spent my day on Saturday,” he says.

“We qualified for the final of the premier, the first division, so we were in action from 11 o’clock on, so I just caught glimpses of the Cork and Dublin game but, from what I could hear people talking about it, it wasn’t a great game.

“Certainly the atmosphere wasn’t there – 1.15 on a Saturday in Thurles is not the time to be playing a Championship hurling game like that.”

Midleton lost narrowly in the final against Galway’s Oranmore-Maree, but the future is bright from a black and white point of view.

“Well we would hope so,” Fenton says.

“They did very well but it’s just hoping now that you can hold onto these players down the line. They did very well but they’re only 15 years of age – if we could hold them for the next three or four years.

“As I said to them last Saturday, the last time we were in that final Tommy O’Connell played on that Midleton team and he was hurling with Cork last Saturday so hopefully at least one, if not a few of them, will make that transition as well.”