With all of the problems facing the County Board resulting from the failure of all of our county hurling teams win a championship game this year (ahead of Sunday’s Thurles clash) an urgent review is needed of the competition provided by the County Board for clubs.
The Senior Hurling Championship, as structured, is of no interest up to the knockout stages and is run off in five or six weeks to simply facilitate a time frame for a split hurling and football season. The failure of the County Board to provide a sponsor for the all-County Leagues does nothing to promote interest and the senior cubs in particular have no real interest in the competition. They would prefer to be free to pursue challenge games with opposition from outside the county to prepare for the championships.
This has been demonstrated by Dungarvan’s failure to turn out in successive weeks against Passage and Roanmore and it is not clear if they intend fulfilling their remaining fixture.
Meanwhile, Ballygunner continued their unbeaten league run with a decisive win over neighbours Passage in Crooke on Friday night on a score of 2-15 to 0-10 while in Division 2 Clonea came away from Lismore with a 2-15 to 1-17 win over the home side while the other Division 2 game involving senior clubs saw De La Salle score their first win away to Tallow on a score of 4-25 to 3-16.
FULL REVIEW NEEDED
As matters stand county players will only be available to their clubs when the senior county side exits the championship and that could be only for the four or five weeks it takes to participate in the club championships. Clubs are fulfilling meaningless league fixtures with depleted sides at adult level and there is no secondary competition for minor club hurlers who have only the championship to look forward to and that will be played after the June exams and run off over a six or seven week period.
Time should not be wasted and a full review of our structures should be undertaken as early as possible
NATIONAL FRONT
On the national front we saw great games last week, courtesy of TG4 in the U-20 provincial finals that saw Cork beat Clare and Offaly follow up last year’s Leinster minor success with the winning of the provincial U-20 title against Wexford. The Minor final between Clare and Galway promises to be a real classic and it is a great pity that the two teams will not be part of the All-Ireland senior final occasion in Croke Park, another decision taken for no good reason and that should be looked at again.