Cork Hurling: Relegation play-off winners enjoy a bounce

Last week, we examined how teams had fared in the county football championships in the year, and years, after winning relegation play-offs.

While there is an initial buzz in having avoided the drop – and being one of the few teams involved in the championships to finish the year with a victory – the trend in the big ball is for more travails rather than upward transformation.

Does the hurling throw up anything markedly different or is it a similar story? With the same time-period to work from – 2020-25, the period since the change in championship format – there are 25 examples to give us a fairly clear overall picture.

And that picture is a far healthier one than in football. While there are of course instances where teams are caught in relegation quicksand and see their luck run out eventually, there are more cases where the confidence from the win and/or the jolt of being sucked into the relegation battle have served as a springboard for clubs to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Funnily enough, at senior level Charleville have experienced both sides of the coin, albeit in a more pleasing order for the North Cork club. In 2021, they needed penalties to survive against Carrigtwohill but were caught up in the play-off again the following year, beating Na Piarsaigh well.

The bounce from that sent them to the quarter-finals in 2023 but they once again had to contest the play-off in 2024; a resounding victory over Bishopstown led to another knockout appearance last year. Victory over Sarsfields in their opener this year should mean that the pattern is broken this time around, for the better.

As well as Charleville, Kanturk managed to reach the top-flight quarter-finals in the year after winning the play-off, doing so in 2023; the other victors were Bishopstown, who beat Ballyhea in 2020, the first year of the new 12-team grade. The year after, they finished bottom but avoided the play-off and while they didn’t reach the knockout stages in any of the next three years, they weren’t caught up in the last match until 2024 and the loss to Charleville.

In fact, across five years and five grades – with two applicable sides in the Intermediate A championship of 2021 as there had been a three-team 'relegation round-robin' in 2020 – there is only one occasion where a team lost a play-off the year after winning it, Douglas in the IAHC in 2023.

A few had to pull off an escape act for the second successive year but, far more often, the experience is more akin to that of Charleville or Kanturk at Premier Senior.

While nobody has managed to effect the ultimate turnaround of exiting a grade through the sun-roof the year after almost falling through the trap-door, Carrigaline reached the 2024 Premier IHC final after having to beat Bandon a year previously.

In addition, last year saw Carrigtwhohill and Aghada claim top-two seedings in the SAHC and IAHC respectively, earning direct paths to the semi-finals; in 2022, Russell Rovers were in the Premier JHC semis, a marked contrast from the relegation play-off of the season beforehand.

Of the teams in this year’s championship seeking to use 2025 relegation play-off victories as a springboard, none lost their openers: wins for Castlemartyr in the Premier IHC, Youghal in the IAHC and Barryroe in Premier Junior while Newtownshandrum and Corucey Rovers secured draws at Premier Senior and Senior A respectively. 

It would appear that the general trend has a good chance of being maintained.