County senior hurling championship

[joe bloggs]

Two groups of 6, top 3 go through as I advocated last year. Group winners into semis and 2nd play 3rd in quarters. 5th and 6th into relegation. 4th are out. Group games have a relevance then.

Agree completely. There's no sense in the farcical situation that we had this year where only one of the final round fixtures had any relevance whatsoever.

Sure you could still have dead rubbers with 3 qualifying instead of four.
You may also be putting the winners of the groups at a disadvantage as they would have to wait up to four weeks for the semi final if fixtures are alternating between hurling and football

[Lone Shark]

Two groups of 6, top 3 go through as I advocated last year. Group winners into semis and 2nd play 3rd in quarters. 5th and 6th into relegation. 4th are out. Group games have a relevance then.

Agree completely. There's no sense in the farcical situation that we had this year where only one of the final round fixtures had any relevance whatsoever.

Sure you could still have dead rubbers with 3 qualifying instead of four.
You may also be putting the winners of the groups at a disadvantage as they would have to wait up to four weeks for the semi final if fixtures are alternating between hurling and football

You could have dead rubbers, but there is a big difference between a system whereby the only difference in placing that matters is 4th vs 5th, as opposed to a system whereby there's a reason to compete for 1st, 3rd, and 4th.

[leinsterman]

lads its not the way the championship has been played or group's the bottom line is the standard of hurling in the county is Brutal
i don't mind the way it is run at the moment most teams get 4 or 5 games which is not a bad thing.

people say that tullamore won last year and lost a few games the same this year seir kierans beat them bye 22 points and they are in the semil and clareen
are gone well thats the way it goes. the thing i would be asking is how a team like my club Birr go through the group winning all their games in the group
and then fail to turn up the semil final thats what i would be asking.

Most teams get 4 or 5 games but they are games of a league standard due to there being so little at stake. There's no advantage to that.

fair enough but if it was like years ago people would be saying some teams only get 1 or 2 games and our young players that are not at strong clubs
don't get many games so you can't win the same goes for the football as well.

[bracknaghboy]

This whole thing is complicated. Weren't our club championships straightforward knockout basis at various stages in the 90's and we had a hurling team winning All-Irelands and footballers winning a Leinster and league title? I think there is a fundamental problem with the 6 team groups (beit the top 3 or 4 that progress to the knockout stages) particularly in a county attempting to run both codes. Its too drawn out, too long in my opinion. Also we have the uncertainty that exists as the county board are afraid to run off games in the weeks before the county teams play. I'd favour a return to the groups of 4. Top 2 progress.
I'm aware that people think players need more games to get better but you must consider the quality of the games they are getting. 3 hard fought games are far better than 5 games played in the knowledge that winning or losing wasn't the be all and end all of it. Nobody could honestly say that all the group games were contested 100% by teams fighting for a place in the knockout stages. It simply didn't happen. Even poorish teams knew they could win just 2 out of 5 and still go through. Starting groups in May and still playing group games in early-mid September isn't on. I know out our way suporters end up losing interest in the intermediate football when there are 6 week layoffs without a game. Sure auld fellas dont know what going!!! If I had a euro for every time I heard "Is that football over for the year?" and the lads having only played 2 of their 5 games!!!

[leinsterman]

well what they should do for a three year term open draw and every game is a knock out like as Bracknaghboy said i didn't
do any harm in the 80s when we were winning hurling and football all irelands. that would cut out the dead rubber group games
and every game would be like a final plus more people would go to them as they might not see their club again that year.

The crowd for saturdays game's was poor you would see more at a ringing of a pig it might work.

[concrete]

yeah so we'll let them all train for 6-7 months then play one game, lose and your out, as if that will really help the players, never gonna happen.....

[backofthenet]

I think all players would be against a lose and your out policy for the championship, whilst it might be good for supporters i dont think too many players would take kindly to being out of the championship in May after only 70 minutes hurling.

The reason for the poor crowd was the location, if it was in birr, rath or kilcormac there would have been at least double the crowd and a much better atmosphere to boot. Just because we wasted 5 million building a stadium that will never be full or at most once a year is not a reason to play every match of significance down there.

I would favour keeping the same 2 groups of 6, the top team in each group through to a semi final, 2nd play third in quarter finals, 4th is out and the bottom two play off in relegation. That way there would be more bite to the group games. Also I think the county board should ensure that there is a championship game every month regardless of how the county team are going. Tipp and Kilkenny done it this year and have been for the last number of years. This would ensure that the players dont become rusty, unfit or disillusioned from just training for 4 months with no game in sight. If there was better scheduling of games (at least 2 - 3 weeks in advance) it would give teams the opportunity to properly prepare for each game.

[concrete]

i agree that there should be a game every month regardless of how county team is doing, no game for 4-5 months, then push in 5-6 in space of 2 months, tullamore dual players will have been out every week now for the last 4 weeks i think, plus their out tomorrow in the football and again next week in the hurling

[faithfullad]

Some disgraceful scenes at the K/K Tullamore match today...

[Offaly2010]

Some disgraceful scenes at the K/K Tullamore match today...

Agreed faithfullad. Some of the scenes in OCP today were shocking.

Could somebody please explain what happened for K/K's first red card? Now,I was on the terrace but I completely missed what happened. Was the right man sent off at all??

Since that first red card the game really started to come to life and there was a bit more intensity about the match but emotions started to boil over with about 15 minutes to go over on the stand side of the field and things got out of hand and some of the scenes were terrible. As I say, I was on the terrace and didn't have a great view of what exactly was going on and I could be very wrong but did I see a spectator run out of the stand straight into the middle of it all?? As I say,I could be wrong.

More dissapointing scenes at the end of the game, not least seeing Johnny Pilkington tear the whole way across the field after the referee. There was I'd say 12-15 stewards around the referees tunnel after the game protecting the referee(who in fairness had a poor game)from K/K supporters.

Having said all that, I'd like to talk a bit about the hurling itself now. So it's Tullamore and Coolderry in the final. Tullamore going for 2 in a row, Coolderry aiming to lift the Robbins cup for the first time since Joe Brady did so 6 years ago. Could be a great final.

In fairness, Coolderry wouldn't have learned much about themselves today. It was more like a training match for them, Kinnity were woeful. Tullamore on the other hand will be going into the final having had the benefit of a good,hard Semi-Final and will be well up for the challenge of Coolderry.

So, after two strange enough Semi-Finals, I look forward to the final.

[faithfullad]

I'm not too sure about K/K's 1st red card, I didn't even know what he was sent off for, all I know is that Slevin was not happy... A spectator did run on to the field. He was knocked to the ground fairly quickly and beaten well before being put back in the stands.

[townman]

I Though the supporter that ran on start boxing with the tullamore player's as i was in the stand he also was out on the field at the end looking for
the ref didn't think he was from tullamore. Johnny Pilkington should have more cop on than that what he did at the end running after the ref.

as for the final if tullamore hurl like they did today Coolderry will wipe the floor with them, it will tell you whats in offaly tullamore back in the county final
with only one forward Shane Dooley, as for KK they will never win the county title they haven't the bottle or brains to win one.

Coolderry to win the county final pulling up.

[Plain of the Herbs]

I just did a count on what referees officiated at the Senior hurling matches this year. The 30 group matches were handled by the following-

5 – Declan Cooke
4 – Brian Gavin, Martin Kirwan, Tony Carroll, Ciarán Groome
3 – Martin Walsh
2 – Aidan Ryan
1 – Noel Flynn, Pádraig Freeman, Paddy Egan & Carthage Buckley.

The four quarter-finals were refereed by Martin Walsh, Tony Carroll, Martin Kirwan & Brian Gavin, and as everyone now knows Declan Cooke & Martin Walsh did the 2 semi-finals.