WEXFORD HURLING manager Colm Bonnar has called for an open competition for the MacCarthy Cup. The former Tipperary All-Ireland winner and Waterford selector, who was severely critical of last season’s (ultimately abandoned) relegation play-offs, was speaking a week before the GAA holds a special congress to debate the format for next year’s All-Ireland championships.
The final motion on the clár for the congress proposes a blueprint for future All-Irelands be brought to next year’s annual congress after “a full consultative process”.
Problems arose when April’s congress decided – on the basis of a motion later deemed out of order by the Disputes Resolution Authority – to allow the Christy Ring Cup winners from the Tier Two All-Ireland an automatic right to play in the following season’s MacCarthy Cup, meaning an established Tier One team would have to make way. That was avoided when the DRA effectively ruled the play-offs had to be scrapped.
In Bonnar’s view any county that believes it is capable of doing so should be allowed contest the MacCarthy Cup. “I believe in Carlow’s right to play at the higher level . . . The GAA is celebrating 125 years of hurling but there are only 12 or 13 counties competing at the highest level. Any county like Carlow and Westmeath should be able to opt for playing at the top level. I believe we should go all out to encourage teams to play at the highest level.
“It would be a farce to have counties like ourselves, Offaly and Clare playing in the Ring Cup. And Antrim. There aren’t enough hurling counties and we shouldn’t be making it difficult for the ones that are there.”
There were many criticisms of the MacCarthy Cup relegation play-offs last summer, as the counties involved – Wexford, Clare, Offaly and Antrim – protested it was hard to motivate teams, which had just been eliminated from the championship, to take part.
“You’re trying to prepare hell for leather to compete in the MacCarthy Cup,” says Bonnar, “and teams are naturally ambitious to do something every championship. Then it doesn’t happen – you lose by a point or two, as we did, and next thing after all of that disappointment you play a match that could send you down to the Ring. There’s no appetite for it.”
The Wexford manager’s call echoes an initiative trialled by the Leinster Council but subsequently declared contrary to rule, whereby a team could be invited to contest the senior provincial championship without being graded as a MacCarthy Cup competitor. Had Westmeath, who benefited from the brief dispensation, won a couple of matches there was the capacity for an administrative headache. At the same time the promotional value to the county’s hurlers of facing All-Ireland champions Kilkenny was acknowledged.
Bonnar also criticised the league format that keeps some of the MacCarthy Cup counties in Division Two, saying that playing in the lower division is “killing the likes of Wexford hurling”. The county played in Division Two last season and failed to win promotion after a play-off against Offaly, opponents Wexford beat in the championship a few weeks later. Bonnar believes the standard of league participation dictates a county’s championship fortunes in a completely different manner to what happens in football.
“It’s trying to put a football solution on hurling. I have sympathy with Mike Mac [Clare manager]. Michael McNamara said his team, which was relegated last year, would be better off playing challenge matches than league fixtures in the lower division] in his views on the division. We won a number of matches by 20 points with a handful of people watching. It’s good for counties trying to bridge the gap that they can play Wexford and Offaly but it’s killing the likes of Wexford hurling.”
The special congress is being held tomorrow week in the City West Hotel and is expected to sanction Carlow’s place in next year’s MacCarthy Cup and agree to defer consideration of championships from 2011 until next year’s annual congress.
