Hurling by numbers - how the relegation play-off winners fared the following year

Elsewhere in today’s Echo, you’ll read interviews with managers whose teams have won their last game of the year and the dominant word is ‘relief’.

These are of course the relegation play-offs, the ‘Slán leat’ games as the late Paudie Palmer called them, the matches nobody wants to be involved in but that somebody has to lose.

As outlined previously, under the new championship system we have yet to see a team bounce straight back from relegation in hurling, with Newcestown in senior A football last year the only example of it – unfortunately, another relegation the next year or the year after has been more common.

But what of the sides who have avoided the drop by winning those games? Has it led to a revival or merely been a stay of execution? Today, we will look at hurling and tomorrow examine football.

The good news for the sides managing to preserve their status is that, of the 20 previous examples – five grades across four years since the change in format – there has been just two instances of a team being relegated the year after winning the play-off. They were two second teams, both in the IAHC – Glen Rovers in 2020 and 2021 and Douglas in 2022 and 2023. Unfortunately for the latter, they subsequently lost the Premier JHC relegation play-off this year, too.

The other side of it is that no team has won a hurling championship, or even reached a final, the year after. In the Premier IHC, Valley Rovers bounced back from their 2020 relegation play-off win to make the 2021 semi-finals and Carrigaline have achieved the same this year – they could still become the first side to achieve the ultimate redemption.

It’s worth noting too that Watergrasshill, also in the semi-finals this year in the third tier, had to win the relegation play-off in 2021 – in fact, they have only lost one championship match since but five draws across 2022 and 2023 meant that they didn’t qualify from their group.

The last two winners of the Premier SHC relegation play-off before this year – Charleville in 2022 and Kanturk last year – have made the subsequent quarter-finals. However, after last year’s showing, in which they topped their group, Charleville found themselves back in the final-chance game this year, having to beat Bishopstown to stay in the top flight.

They could perhaps take encouragement from Killeagh, who had to win the SAHC play-off in 2020 and 2022 with a third-placed group finish in between, but have made the quarter-finals in the last two seasons and, with talented teenagers to come on stream next year, look well-set to push on further.

Another East Cork side, Russell Rovers, have similarly responded well to their dicing with danger in 2021, reaching the semi-finals the following year and also making the last four, at last, in the current campaign.

Of course, their 2021 slide followed a final appearance in the 2020 campaign, which serves to show just how quickly things can change in the space of a year.