League versus championship - a look at the correlation on a team basis

Yesterday I looked at league and championship results across the board comparing each the past 10 years, to see if there is any correlation between the two competitions.

Now, the spotlight shifts to individual teams, and how their performances have varied over the past 10 seasons of the top grade in the National Hurling League and the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship.

Interestingly, there are more patterns that emerge when looking at the teams themselves. For one, there are two counties that standout as the most consistent across league and championship. Their performances from one do tend to carry over to the other.

The two teams are of course Limerick and Kilkenny, unsurprisingly.

The pair have made it to at least the semi-finals of both competitions in the same year, no less than five of the 10 seasons in focus.

Waterford follow closely having achieved that feat four times, which is made even more impressive when you consider that they haven’t won the Liam MacCarthy Cup in that 10-year period. Not since 1948 have the Déise taken the All-Ireland crown.

When you take the outliers, or teams that have failed to produce consistency between both league and championship – it’s quite telling. 

It’s clear which counties perform in championship regardless of their league results, and which counties consistently flatter to deceive.

Galway quite clearly stand as the greatest outlier, for the right reasons at least.

They may have had very little success in the league during the 10-year period examined, but they’ve been able to consistently bounce back and make the semi-finals of the championship, even winning it in 2017. But that is the one season where they did win the league title.

Cork are another interesting outlier.

The Rebel County have not won a single league or championship trophy during this period. But strangely, poor league campaigns seem to return better championship performances. The opposite is also true.

Positive league campaigns have often seen Cork fail to impress in the All-Ireland Championship.

While somewhat unsurprising – the tale is true. Wexford do in fact live up to their reputation.

The team have always received plaudits for their consistent performances in the league, but as the story goes – they crumble when championship rolls around.

This example in particular is why the National Hurling League is viewed in a vastly different light to the championship equivalent by fans across the country. That’s not to disrespect Wexford – they have some quality hurlers.

The problem is that they fail to demonstrate that year after year in the Leinster Championship.

Wexford have made it to the league semi-finals five times from without a championship semi-final appearance in any of those seasons.

The one year they did manage to make it to the All-Ireland semi-final, was ironically, when they came into the summer off the back of a poor league campaign.

The only teams that come close to that are Tipperary and Cork, but given that the Rebels have made two All-Ireland finals in that time frame and Tipp have won two titles it’s fair to say Wexford’s record is the least desirable.

Overall, the numbers do paint an interesting picture, but it remains difficult to form a concrete conclusion.

While yes, patterns do exist – they are fairly insignificant.

I think the mean average of 1.8 out of 4 regarding the crossover of teams between the semi-finals describes it best.

League results in hurling are not totally insignificant. They do make a difference to the players and management teams.

However, that difference is not influential enough to change public perception around the importance of results within the leagues. They are and will remain a “pre-season” competition in the eyes of hurling fans, even if that’s not what they’re intended to be.