Offaly Senior Hurling Championship Structure 2014

[kinnittyman]

I was just listening to a soundcloud on the Midlands 103 site featuring some current hurlers and journalists discussing our championship structure and ALL were agreed that the current system is not providing the platform for an optimum hurling championship in the county.

It seems that the main support was to retain the current 2 groups of but only allow the top 3 to qualify. However I feel this will lead to too many dead games as the group stage progresses so how would people feel about the following:

3 groups of 4 -

Group A - Kilcormac / Killoughey and 3 other teams who qualified for this year's Quarter - Finals.
Group B - Birr and 3 other teams who qualified for this year's quarter final
Group C - The 4 teams who didn't qualify for this year's quarter final (Drumcullen, Brosna Gaels, Kinnitty, Lusmagh or Ballinamere)

The top 3 teams in Groups A and B make the quarter finals along with the top 2 in Group C.
The teams that win Group A and B play the qualifers from Group C in the Quarter Final. (This rewards the team that wins Group A and Group B as they play a "weaker" team in Quarter Final)
The other 2 quarter finals are 2nd Group A vs 3rd Group B and vice versa.

Semi - Finals are an open draw with the provision that if the group winners from Group A and Group B are still involved they can't meet in semi-finals.

For the 2015 Championship the two teams that qualified for the Quarter - Finals from Group C in 2014 go into the stronger groups while the bottom team from Group A and Group B in 2014 enter Group C in 2015.

The aim for all teams should be to be in Groups A and B for 2 reasons:
1. 3 teams enter Quarter Finals from this group
2. You can only be relegated to intermediate if you are in Group C.

Also the championship should run concurrently with the inter-county season. Offaly don't need a month together between the Kilkenny match and the first round of the qualifiers. A round of championship should be hurled in this window.

[GreatDayForTheParish]

I was just listening to a soundcloud on the Midlands 103 site featuring some current hurlers and journalists discussing our championship structure and ALL were agreed that the current system is not providing the platform for an optimum hurling championship in the county.

It seems that the main support was to retain the current 2 groups of but only allow the top 3 to qualify. However I feel this will lead to too many dead games as the group stage progresses so how would people feel about the following:

3 groups of 4 -

Group A - Kilcormac / Killoughey and 3 other teams who qualified for this year's Quarter - Finals.
Group B - Birr and 3 other teams who qualified for this year's quarter final
Group C - The 4 teams who didn't qualify for this year's quarter final (Drumcullen, Brosna Gaels, Kinnitty, Lusmagh or Ballinamere)

The top 3 teams in Groups A and B make the quarter finals along with the top 2 in Group C.
The teams that win Group A and B play the qualifers from Group C in the Quarter Final. (This rewards the team that wins Group A and Group B as they play a "weaker" team in Quarter Final)
The other 2 quarter finals are 2nd Group A vs 3rd Group B and vice versa.

Semi - Finals are an open draw with the provision that if the group winners from Group A and Group B are still involved they can't meet in semi-finals.

For the 2015 Championship the two teams that qualified for the Quarter - Finals from Group C in 2014 go into the stronger groups while the bottom team from Group A and Group B in 2014 enter Group C in 2015.

The aim for all teams should be to be in Groups A and B for 2 reasons:
1. 3 teams enter Quarter Finals from this group
2. You can only be relegated to intermediate if you are in Group C.

Also the championship should run concurrently with the inter-county season. Offaly don't need a month together between the Kilkenny match and the first round of the qualifiers. A round of championship should be hurled in this window.

No, no, a thousand times no.

The attitude of the GAA community towards the structure of its championships is nothing short of complete and utter lunacy. Honestly, you could do a psychology thesis on it.

For reasons that I can assume are largely due to tradition and little else, there is a morbid fixation among many followers in ensuring every game in a championship is 'do or die' along with a near total intolerance of any semi-extended league structure. This can not happen. It does not happen in any other sport. In an age where every other sporting organisation are looking to increase games, exposure, revenue - many in the GAA community would happily see their club and inter county competitions revert to straight knock out or close to straight knock out competitions.

Take your plan for example. For 4 of the 12 teams in your plan, they would only play THREE meaningful championship games in a year. For 8 of the 12 teams, only FOUR games would be provided. How does such a paucity of games promote hurling in those clubs or among the wider community/supporters? How would it encourage kids to play hurling/football in an era when they are saturated with coverage from other sports? What about the players? Surely they would like more than three damn games in a 12 month period to play for and represent their club. Surely managers deserve more time than three games a year to fine tune their team before the curtain closes on another season

In the current six group format, there are certainly a few dead rubber games. So what? It happens in every sport worldwide. The cream will rise to the top eventually and I have no problem with the few extra games it takes to sort that out. Your format kinnittyman would itself have a reasonable number of meaningless fixtures. Two groups of four with three qualifying? Come on, after one or two rounds certain teams would be guaranteed a quarter final place and the effort would grind to a halt for the third group game.


Certainly, the GAA is a unique sporting/cultural organisation and nobody is calling for an extended 10 game+ league season. But we need to get real, take our head out of the mists of time and begin market and structure our games appropriate for the times.

Leave it at the two groups of six. Firsts in each group through to the semi. Seconds and thirds to the quarters. Fourths - season over. Fifths and sixths - relegation semi finals. Ensures a reasonable number of games with every group position offering something to play for.

(PS Kinnittyman - sorry for the criticism. Strictly a case of playing the ball, not the man).
(PPS - Agree completely with running the club championship through the inter-county season).

[Plain of the Herbs]

Every possible championship structure is going to have benefits and drawbacks and after a few years people are going to get bored with it and demand changes.

I do agree that reducing the number of teams who qualify from the group to three from the present four is not going to reduce the number of dead games. That would just mean that the 'key games' are shifted up along the line. So this year the matches involving Belmont, Lusmagh & Kinnitty were the 'eliminators', as were the matches between Tullamore, Brosna Gaels and Drumcullen. If three teams were to advanve, the 'eliminators' would have involved Shinrone, Belmont and Kinnitty in one group and Clareen, Tullamore and Brosna in the other group.

When I saw 3 groups in Kinnittyman's proposals I thought "aw Jaysus" but the '2 strong groups, 1 weak group' eliminates one group winner having to play a quarter-final while the other two get byes to the semi-final - Tullamore in 2008 being a case in point. The '2 strong groups, 1 weak group' also eliminates round-robin relegation playoffs which should be absolutely avoided. Byes to the semi-final should be avoided - it leaves the group winner with at least four weeks between the final group match and the semi-final. That is not an advantage.

Kinnittyman's proposal also means two fewer weekends are required. The dual clubs will approve. With Offaly set to exit the inter-county championships by the end of June for the foreseeable future, there would be scope not to start the championship until July. This year there was just a fortnight between the Kilkenny match and the Waterford one. Granted the footballers had four weeks between the Kildare match and the Tyrone mismatch but the 'county hurlers playing club football' issue (which will, like the poor, be always with us) scuppered the chance of playing a complete SFC round during June.

The one drawback I see from the structure proposed by Kinnittyman is that the eight quarter-finalists will not necessarily be the best eight teams in the competition as, on balance, they have been during the last three years.

You can only be knocked out of a championship once. The one main drawback of the current sctructure is this - the top 'seeds' are fixed to play each other in round 1, with the intention of starting the championship with a bang. Be that as it may. The follow-on is that the bottom seeds also play each other in the opening round. So in 2011 the Good Friday match between Drumcullen and Shamrocks condemned the loser to the relegation Final with four rounds still to play. This year Lusmagh and Drumcullen had practically no chance of qualifying after losing the opening round to Kinnitty and Tullamore respectively, the one match both would have targetted for a win in order to survive.

[Lone Shark]

What Kinnittyman has proposed is essentially the "weak group" concept, which was in place during the early part of the last decade if I recall. I also recall that we weren't happy with it then either.

I would agree with the "three qualifiers" idea and just be happy with that one small change, and while I can see POTH's line of thinking, I don't think you can plan on that basis. Such a line of thought presupposes that upsets can't happen - and while we all know that this is usually the case, you can't plan a championship on the basis that club A is 100% stonewall guaranteed to beat club B and so their fixture with club C should be set accordingly.

In fact if anything, maybe we'd get better games if clubs did have to fight for their lives more in the group stages. I'm not saying Tullamore made a conscious decision this year to sit back after beating Brosna Gaels and Drumcullen in the first two games, but I saw their game against Birr in Banagher and I saw their game against Rynaghs in Tullamore - they were a very different animal when they needed to be and their lives depended on it.

[Lone Shark]

Here's the relevant discussion from Midlands Radio by the way.

https://soundcloud.com/midlandssport/fu ... aly-senior