JOHNNY McINTOSH: Shadowboxing on the Antrim hurling front

As  we come towards the final round of the Antrim Senior Hurling Championship group stage, I keep coming back to the same thought: the championship needs a change.

Maybe that sounds a bit radical, but to me the current format has become stale.

We have an eight-team senior championship with a group stage that, inevitably, seems to lead us towards the same four teams occupying the semi-final places year after year.

Of course, there was a significant change last year when St John’s won the championship for the first time in decades. That was a great story and deservedly celebrated, but the reality is that they had been consistently reaching semi-finals before finally getting over the line.

I understand why the group-stage format has caught on. There are obvious benefits to it. Every team gets a number of championship games, clubs have more certainty about their fixtures and, importantly, there is revenue to be generated from those games.

I wouldn’t dismiss that financial argument. Three group games bring people through the gates and generate tens of thousands of pounds for a county board. That matters.

But I think there is another way of looking at it. My suggestion would be to alternate the format. Why not have a championship that is played on a straight knockout on a bi-annual basis? It might sound a little whacky, but I think it is worth trying.

The biggest issue in Antrim is not necessarily the championship format itself. It is the difficulty we have in bringing more teams up to the highest standard.

That isn’t something you can simply blame on the county board. Some of it comes down to the size of clubs and their ability to consistently produce enough top-quality players.

What Antrim needs, in my opinion, is more clubs capable of competing at that level.

I know that from my own club, Glenariffe. We came up and, thankfully, we have managed to survive. We have taken a couple of fairly big beatings in the championship so far, but we’ll be back in it again next year, and that is important.

You have to get through that first year. Other clubs have come up in recent seasons and gone straight back down. That’s the difficulty. You need to spend time at the top table to learn how to survive there and, eventually, to compete. It is the same at county level as well.

That’s another reason I think a straight knockout championship, perhaps on an alternating two-year cycle, could be beneficial.

We often forget about the demands we are placing on the same players. When the same clubs are constantly reaching semi-finals and finals, it means the same players are constantly playing county hurling right through the year and then club hurling, inevitably, into October and November.

A different championship format could freshen things up, and t would also give some of the so-called lesser clubs a genuine opportunity to have a go.

Look at Tyrone football. Their championship is straight knockout. Killyclogher won the Division One league this year and they are already out of the championship after Errigal Ciaran knocked them out in the first round.

Does that mean Tyrone footballers aren’t developing? Does it mean they aren’t becoming competitive at All-Ireland level? It sure doesn’t look that way.

If anything, straight knockout puts jeopardy into every game. It keeps things exciting. It means there is something genuinely at stake every time a team takes the field.

Of course, it is disappointing for the Killyclogher players. But they get a break, they can regroup and they can have another go next year.

There is something to be said for that. And that’s what I think Antrim could benefit from: a little more jeopardy.

Little at stake

Take this weekend. Cushendall and Dunloy will meet, but there is very little at stake because both teams are already through. The incentive, realistically, is about getting a longer break ahead of the semi-final. There is no real jeopardy, so you inevitably get an element of shadowboxing.

My own club is playing St Enda’s, and there is genuine jeopardy there because the winner progresses to a quarter-final. But then you can almost predict the road ahead.

St John’s, Loughgiel, Cushendall and Dunloy – once again, you are looking at those four teams as the most likely semi-finalists.

And, incidentally, I think Dunloy have looked particularly good so far. They face another challenge, though, because they are also in a position where they could potentially win the football championship. That is an enormous demand on a club.

Week after week after week, you’re asking the same players to keep going, and eventually keeping the whole squad fresh and available becomes the biggest challenge of all.

That brings me back to the wider question around the length of the season. I hear more and more players grumbling about it, and not just the county season – the length of the club season as well.

I don’t want to be overly nostalgic about the past, because there were obviously things that weren’t right then either. But I remember when the championship might have started in the last week of June or the first week of July, and if you were beaten, that was it. Your season could be very short, and maybe it was too short, but I think we’ve swung too far in the other direction now.

The whole thing drags on and I don’t think that is sustainable for a lot of players. Players want to travel. They want to take a few months away. They have jobs, families and lives outside the GAA. Yet there isn’t really an opportunity for someone to take a decent period away and still return in time to play a meaningful club championship.

That’s the reality we have to acknowledge.

The GAA has tried to condense the county season, and I understand the thinking behind that. But, in practice, all we have done is create a block of the year when club fixtures can’t be played. The consequence is that the club season stretches even further.

So perhaps we need to think differently. I am not suggesting that the group-stage format should disappear altogether. There is a financial argument for it, and there is value in guaranteeing clubs a number of championship games.

But why not try something different every few years? Give us a straight knockout championship. Give the underdogs a genuine chance of causing an upset. Give the established teams a reason to fear the first round. Give players the opportunity to have a shorter championship season.

Sometimes you just have to shake the whole thing up.