Clubs to run the rule over new championship plans

STEPHEN GLENNON

THE proposed new structures of the Galway senior and intermediate championships will take centre stage when the Galway Hurling Board convention gets underway this evening (Thursday) at the Raheen Woods Hotel, Athenry (8pm).

With all Hurling Board officers – including Chairman Joe Byrne, Secretary Pat Kearney and Treasurer John McGann – to be re-elected unopposed, the focus will largely be on the recent proposals set out by the Galway Hurling Review Group, some of which form motions on the convention’s agenda.

To the fore is the re-structuring of the senior and intermediate championships, which proposes that the number of teams in the senior competition be extended from 20 to 21 and that a new format be put in place which grants the previous year’s intermediate champions a two-year term, at the very least, at this grade.

Under the proposal, in the first round, the other 20 teams would play each other in an open draw format, with the 10 winners progressing to a group stage – four groups of four – and the 10 losers of the first round would then play off in a subsequent series of games.

The five winners from that second round of games would also join the group stages – along with the intermediate champions – while the other five would be condemned to a relegation battle run on a league basis. One team will be relegated each year.

In the group stages – rounds three to five – teams will play three games, with the top two sides in each group of four advancing to the quarter-finals and the bottom two teams entering a Shield equivalent. The same principles will also apply to the intermediate competition. 

Other motions on the structure of these championships for 2012 have also been put forward by Athenry, Meelick/Eyrecourt and Gort, but these motions, it is understood, were submitted prior to the report’s recommendations and, in light of the Group’s proposals, may be withdrawn.

In any event, both Athenry and Meelick/Eyrecourt are seeking a two-tier senior championship, with the latter advocating an ‘A’ and ‘B’ senior competitions and a 12 team intermediate championship. For their part, Gort are seeking the retention of the 2011 system for the running of the senior and intermediate hurling championships for 2012.

Two other motions drafted by the Review Group – and submitted by Kilbeacanty – are also up for discussion, namely the proposal calling for the All-Ireland U-21 championship to be played in a Champions League style format and the changing of the 13-day inter-county rule to just six days, so allowing club fixtures to go ahead the week before inter-county ties.

Meanwhile, in his Secretary’s Report, Pat Kearney has alluded to the trials and tribulations of the Galway senior team in 2011, including their “abject performance” against Waterford in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

He noted that it was, once again, Galway’s “inability to react in a pressure game situation” that ultimately cost them.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.