GAELIC GAMES CHAMPIONSHIP 2008 NEWS:LEINSTER COUNCIL has already considered the prospect of playing the provincial hurling final outside of Croke Park. With a maximum attendance estimated at 25,000, Sunday's Kilkenny-Wexford match could have been comfortably staged in a provincial venue.
"The most we can hope for is 25,000," according to provincial chief executive Michael Delaney, "and that will be lost in Croke Park. We talked about it this year and I'd say that but for the Dublin-Wexford semi-final going to a replay we'd probably have gone ahead and moved the final. But the extra week made it impractical to switch venues at short notice.
"We would have been thinking in terms of asking Wexford and Kilkenny to toss for venue and alternate it the next time the counties met in the final."
So far this decade all but two of the nine finals have featured Kilkenny-Wexford matches and apart from a semi-final win in 2004, Wexford have been beaten in all meetings with the champions.
Had the decision been taken to move venue it would have been the first time in 47 years the Leinster hurling final would have been played outside of Croke Park. In 1961, the last time Dublin hurlers won the senior Leinster title, the final against then All-Ireland champions Wexford was played in Nowlan Park, Kilkenny.
The question of moving out of Croke Park has been raised by the declining attendances in the provincial hurling championship. Since the halcyon days of the 1990s when three different Leinster counties won the All-Ireland within the space of five years, attendances have steadily dropped.
Eleven years ago there were record attendances at both the Leinster semi-finals and finals, with crowds of 52,079 and 55,492, respectively. In recent years the semi-finals have been moved out of Croke Park, while the finals have struggled to break 40,000 - even with the added lure of football championship matches on the same double bill.
According to Delaney, this will be a less rewarding season for the Leinster Council, with attendances down and the football final not expected to test the Croke Park capacity. This owes something to the draw, which was more favourable a year ago and the presence of Wexford, who in contrast to the county's hurling support, draw poor crowds to football matches.
"In 2007 we had Dublin-Meath going to a replay. This time we would expect a crowd around the same size as Sunday's (67,075). Wexford won't suddenly have huge football support and I'd imagine the crowd will be between 65,000 and 70,000," said Delaney.
"But that's not the way we judge the seasons and it's marvellous to see Wexford coming through as a new face on the scene. There's been a lot of development work in the county and it's paid off."
It means a seventh different final pairing in the Leinster football final, a variety unequalled since the 1940s.
On a different issue, Delaney said the council had heard nothing official in relation to Antrim hurling joint-manager Terence McNaughton's call for his county to be admitted into the Leinster hurling championship.
"Nobody has mentioned anything about this to us from an Antrim point of view. We've heard about it at various levels but no one has applied to the Leinster Council and we wouldn't go looking for Antrim either because there's already a provincial championship in Ulster and only this year there have been moves to make it more broadly based, which were considered successful so we would be conscious of this before taking the provincial champions away from their own championship."
The Hurling Development Committee has been discussing more practical arrangements in terms of the provincial finals.
"The HDC have been looking at proposals but they're still at the discussion stage. If they're clarified and finalised they would have to go to congress or special congress so any change is some way off at the moment. I know that one of the ideas under consideration is the creation of a "Rest of Ireland" region to incorporate Leinster, Galway and Antrim - but that's still only on the drawing board."
