Malachy Clerkin: Pitting club hurling’s best game against the World Cup final is stupid

Here’s the thing about putting Ballyhale v Ballygunner on at the same time as the World Cup final – people don’t care what good and sound reasons the GAA might have for doing it, they only care that it’s happening. And by and large they think it’s stupid.

No, granted, it’s not the biggest deal in the ever-going world. And, no, we’re not talking about an overwhelming number of potential viewers here in any case. But that even just makes it worse somehow. Why look so silly over something so small?

People don’t care about the confluence of events. You can sit them down and explain that the Galway club St Thomas’s, who are in the other game of the double-header, have a wedding on the Saturday. You can further demonstrate that, in any case, Croke Park is being used on the Saturday, and that Semple Stadium is getting remedial work done on it at the moment and isn’t available either. You can point out that neither team has any objection to the time and date as it has been set out, and that they both like playing in Croke Park and this was the only way to fit them in there and sure aren’t they the most important…

Stop talking. Everyone has tuned out. They’re watching the World Cup.

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The biggest sporting event on the planet kicks off at 3pm on Sunday week. The most anticipated hurling match since the All-Ireland final throws in at 3.30pm. If you were a fixture-maker who wanted to ensure that nobody but the most devoted hurling people watched it, that’s exactly the course of action you would take. Lord, but they’re a maddening bunch sometimes.

The worst of it is that having this pairing in an All-Ireland semi-final the week before Christmas is such a gift to the GAA. It’s that rare thing in the club championships – a game that rolls along under the weight of its own momentum. One of the reasons it’s so hard to generate a wider audience for club games beyond the areas involved is the lack of a narrative thread. The other semi-final is a perfect case in point.

St Thomas’s are in the middle of one of the all-time great club runs out west and have put together the first five-in-a-row in the Galway championship since the 1960s. But they’re up against Dunloy, who they’ve never met before. It is, of course, a huge day for both clubs and their wider communities, but it’s pretty obvious too that the fixture lacks broader appeal.

And that’s fine! Nobody is saying that club matches ever need to be anything more than what they are. You never want to be the sporting organisation that’s out there desperately upselling a niche product. It has to be an organic thing.

Which is exactly the case with Ballygunner v Ballyhale. This game should be the perfect capstone to the hurling year. It has everything. Two clubs who are dominant in county and province. Line-ups filled with household names and next big things. Pinpoint hurlers, gameplans whizzing and whirring with movement and tactics that would put a fair few county set-ups to shame.

Most of all they have a recent history together that sticks in everyone’s mind. Ever since Harry Ruddle scored the injury-time goal into the Hill 16 end in February to wipe Ballyhale’s eye and nick a first ever All-Ireland club title for a Waterford club, all anyone wanted was to tune in the next time the teams met. There’s even a bit of small, simmering needle involved, with Ballyhale apparently irked by the winning speech from Ballygunner captain Barry Coughlan that day.

Why would you want to hide all that away? Why wouldn’t you be doing all you can to find it a nice, shiny, user-friendly spot in the schedules and present it as the last neat bow tied on the GAA year? Maybe they have done all they can and this is all they’re left with. If so, it betrays a fairly damning lack of interest in one of the jewels in your crown.

Moving a match because of the World Cup final isn’t a sign of weakness. Run your finger through rugby’s Champions Cup schedule over the coming months. Starting with Munster v Toulouse this weekend, they have a 3.15pm game kicking off every Sunday right the way through. Every Sunday except next Sunday, that is. Even though it is rugby’s premier club competition the organisers have no intention of going toe-to-toe with the World Cup final. They know it would be self-defeating.

And yet the GAA still do this from time to time. Who can forget the 2011 Champions League final? Uefa had the bad manners to schedule Barcelona v Manchester United at the same time on a Saturday night that Down were playing Armagh in the Ulster Championship. The Leinster Council moved their game between Wexford and Offaly to earlier in the day to avoid the hit on the gate but the Ulster Council wouldn’t be moved. Downright relished not moving, in fact.

“Some people tell me when there is an omnibus edition of Eastenders, attendances are affected,” sniffed Aogán Ó Fearghail, then president of the Ulster Council. “The Russian ballet certainly affected attendances of a major sporting event in England that I was aware of. Do attendances get affected by television? Of course they do. But can we react to everything on TV? I don’t think so.”

Every situation is different and everyone has their reasons. But out there in the world people who like to watch lots of different sports don’t understand why you’d go up against the World Cup final when you could be promoting the best club hurling has to offer.

It would nearly make you wonder if all the talk about showcasing the clubs was just a lot of empty guff all along.