Would home and away Cork club championship fixtures work?

The 2025 Cork County Championships are only two weeks away from getting underway.

It will start with the McCarthy Insurance Group Football Championship on the last weekend of July followed a week later by the opening round of the group stage in the Co-Op SuperStores Hurling Championship.

This season will be the sixth campaign of the group stage format that has been so successful. It has transformed the club season on Leeside in what is now a cut throat championship with every game very important.

There’s jeopardy there as the old saying goes. At the moment, teams have three group games, all at neutral venues before the knockout championship starts.

Could there be a situation in the future where teams have home and away championship fixtures in the group stage?

It has been mooted previously by high-profile figures in Cork. Joseph Blake, former Cork GAA PRO and now Cork’s Munster Council delegate, spoke at length at the 2023 Cork County Board convention at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh about the possibility of teams playing at home in the group stage.

Cork’s 2010 All-Ireland winner Fintan Goold also had the same idea when speaking to Denis Hurley in these pages nearly two years ago.

Cork wouldn’t be the first county if they were to implement it in the future. Blake’s suggestion is that Rounds 1 and 2 of the group stage are played home and away, with Round 3 games staged at neutral venues.

Home and away exists for the opening two rounds of the neighbouring Kerry SFC, with the final round of group fare in the Kingdom run off at neutral venues.

Blake said home games would further increase the profile of the county championship group phase and asked that the Cork County Board executive consider the proposal. Nearly two years on, there has been no significant update.

“From Garnish to Youghal, and from Goleen to Mitchelstown, it would bring championship games to all corners of the county and would take the county championship group stages to a higher level,” Blake began.

“It would also allow greater publicity within each club, knowing many months in advance that a home game would be held later in the year. Due to its geographical location, no adult county championship games were played in Beara in 2023.

“Would it not be of great benefit to the GAA in Beara to be guaranteed five championship games in the division and allow us to showcase county championship games in the division.

“While there would probably be a long journey to an away championship game in either Round 1 or 2, I think the benefits of home and away games would be more beneficial than travelling to a neutral venue on a number of occasions.

“If teams are allowed to play in their home grounds in the Munster club championship, then I feel clubs should be allowed to play a home game in the county championship.” the Adrigole native concluded.

While the suggestion has received support from clubs since Blake most notably spoke in front of a large attendance in December 2023 at the Cork County Board convention, the big worry would be how the home games would be managed in terms of the crowd attending.

It would require outside people to man the gates and scan the tickets so that would require a lot of bodies. Is that possible? Maybe it is.