The GAA Gets It Right With New Hurling Club Championship Proposal
After the outcry over the proposal from the Central Competitions Control Committee last December to exclude any county with less than five hurling clubs from the National League from 2025 onwards - a proposal that was dropped at the 11th hour, and which we covered in our story “…Neither a Hurling Stronghold” - it is only right that we give credit where credit is due.
The rationale of the motion argued that the money spent running an inter-county hurling team for the duration of a National League season would instead be better spent on developing the game at an underage level in each respective county.
There was a widespread outcry at the motion from right across the hurling community, influencing the CCCC to sensibly drop the motion only days before they were due to meet.
This response from the hurling community made it clear that rather than simply cutting off counties with a small number of hurling clubs from competition, new and radical solutions were needed to promote the game in these areas.
The furore over the CCCC’s original proposal seems to have sparked some serious internal discussion, with a proposal from the Central Fixtures Analysis Committee to create a combined counties championship for all counties with ten or less clubs being a positive and innovative suggestion.
The counties who would be impacted by such a proposal include Roscommon, Leitrim, Longford, Louth, Cavan, Fermanagh, Sligo, Tyrone and Monaghan.
It is suggested that this new club championship would replace the traditional county championship in each respective county and would run for five weeks between August and September.
While the CCCC’s original proposal in December was rightly criticised, this new proposal is to be welcomed.
No player wants to play in a one or two horse race county championship! This new proposal gives club hurlers in those nine counties previously mentioned a great opportunity to play seriously competitive fixtures, raising the standard of hurling across the board in the process.