Premier SHC: Few have overcome opening-round losses

Last week, we ran the numbers on the opening sets of fixtures across five previous years of the Cork County Premier SFC.

The objective was to see if a value could be put on a first-round victory in terms of securing qualification – what the aggregated data showed was that, of the teams who were successful in their first outing, exactly three quarters of them progressed to the knockout stage of the competition.

As we established when comparing how clubs winning the relegation play-off had fared the following year, the trend in football may not always match the prevailing flow in hurling – but in the case of first-round wins, there is a far greater correlation across the codes.

Where the premier senior football tally was bang on 75 percent, in the Co-op SuperStores Premier SHC there is a slightly greater chance of a return: across a sample size of 36 matches from 2020-25, a win in the first match equated to a 77.78 chance of progressing. 

When five drawn games are taken out, the figure rises to 90 percent, further underlining the importance of getting off to a good start.

There is an interesting sub-set to the figures, too, although bad news for the teams that go into this weekend’s second round on the back of defeats: in both 2024 and 2025, the six first-round successes in each case lined up perfectly with the teams making it out of the groups. 

That was Sarsfields, Newtownshandrum, Blackrock, Fr O’Neills, Midleton and Kanturk in the first of those years and Sars, Glen Rovers, Midleton, Charleville, Blackrock and St Finbarr’s last season.

The three exceptions to the trend are generally examples of when the top two clubs in a group played each other the first match and the defeated team were able to recover. 

Coincidentally, all three involve Erin’s Own – in 2020, they lost to Blackrock but bounced back; in 2021 and 2022 their opening fixtures yielded wins over the Rockies and the Glen respectively before they qualified along with the city clubs.

The counterpoints in those instances, the clubs who banked two points after the first match but couldn’t sufficiently build on that, were Newtownshandrum beating Bishopstown in 2020, St Finbarr’s getting the better of Charleville in 2021 and Bishopstown in 2022, who saw off Na Piarsaigh.

The strong conversion rate will certainly be tested in the current championship campaign, as the Barrs, the Glen and Sars will seek to regroup this weekend following defeats to Midleton and Blackrock respectively.

The Togher outfit do battle with a Bride Rovers team that belied their just-promoted status with a great win over Newcestown, while the Blackpool side lock horns with Kanturk – the team that beat them in the 2023 relegation play-off – after the Duhallow club got the better of Fr O’Neills. Having been beaten by Charleville, Sars must tackle Newtown. 

While history only tells us what has happened in the past and cannot dictate the future by itself, the material benefit of a first-round win is two points and those teams that have lost have a much reduced margin for error.