Munster chief: four qualifying in hurling would do more harm than good

Munster GAA Council secretary/CEO Kieran Leddy has strongly cautioned against amending the current championship format so as to allow four teams to progress from Munster and Leinster into the All-Ireland series.

At present, the third-placed sides in Munster and Leinster advance to All-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals, with Limerick (2019) and Tipperary (2025) winning the All-Ireland from such a position. 

While there have been calls to allow the fourth-placed counties to remain active too, Leddy - writing his annual report ahead of Friday's convention in Adare - believes that beaten provincial finalists deserve home advantage in All-Ireland quarter-finals but that any move to increase the qualification numbers would dilute the provincial round-robins.

“The round-robin format has been great for hurling," he writes. 

"The Munster Senior Hurling Championship is going through a particularly buoyant phase, and as I referenced in last year’s report, this phase won’t last forever, and the powerhouses of Leinster hurling will make a return to the top table, and this could happen in any year. We must live in the moment.

“There is one tweak I would like to see with venues for the All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals. I believe the provincial final losing team should have some advantage over the team that finished third in their province and home advantage would provide that.

“There is a suggestion that the hurling championship structure should be altered to allow four teams to qualify from the round-robin. In my view, this will do far more harm than good to the profile of hurling. While the championship would gain two quarter-finals with this format, the round-robins would become meaningless, with ten games being played to eliminate one team.

“Therefore, we would lose far more big occasions than the two additional quarter-finals we would gain. The provincial senior hurling championship would become like a warm-up league than a championship.”

While other grades do allow a greater safety-net, Leddy is of the view that such a move would be counter-productive at senior.

“We must stop thinking that our senior championships are there to develop teams. They are there to pit the best teams against each other and to decide who the best team in the country is," he writes.

“There are several other grades and competitions that have a development purpose. For example, the minor and U21 competitions are about developing teams and players and formats are put in place that reflect that. Four teams qualify from the Munster minor hurling championship and this is fine as the competition is all about developing players. However, this would not be the case at senior level.

“The competition is far to all teams, with two home and two away games. It is the jeopardy of the current format that gives the competition the excitement and anticipation that it has, coupled with the success of the Munster counties in the All-Ireland championship.

“We saw in the senior football championship what happened when three teams progressed from a group of four. Too many games became meaningless and supporters lost interest. Does a team deserve to remain in a senior championship if they win one of four games? I don’t think so and this is the scenario we face each year if four teams progress from a group of five.”