GAA bosses need to address hurling format

Former Waterford hurler John Mullane reckons it is time for the GAA's top officials to review the structure of the All-Ireland senior hurling championship, so that it can catch up to the soaring success of football.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One's Saturday Sport, Mullane admitted that the football championship is now the better product, and the one which dominates the condensed calendar.

"Yeah, it's worrying for hurling," Mullane said.

"I'll be straight up with you, I think something has to give (and) I think something has to change.

"I'm not a firm believer that you have to go and mirror the football championship and the structure of the football championship, but we've got to take the learnings from what football are doing.

"Football is the only game, it's the only show in town now for me. It's a cracking game to watch now.

It's really exciting.

"But the structure of the championship is top class. And I think it's something that the powers to be in GAA are definitely going to have to look at.

Mayo's All-Ireland success last weekend captured the hearts and minds of the nations, plus contemporaries further afield, and for Mullane, who played in the 2008 All-Ireland hurling final with Waterford, the best form of change starts at a provincial level, prior to the All-Ireland series.

"The elephant in the room is the Munster Championship. So what do we do? Do we want to continue making buckets of money for the Munster Championship and the game? I wouldn't say it dies, but it's going a long way to going the other way where it's not in a healthy stage", he explained.

"It's so hard. (In Munster) you're potentially facing the All-Ireland winners, you're potentially facing the All-Ireland runners-up, you're potentially facing a Clare (side) who nearly beat the All-Ireland winners.

"When you flip that over to the Leinster Championship, there hasn't been a Leinster winner of the All-Ireland since 2015. That's 11 years now.

"But you look at football, Louth are in an All-Ireland semi-final, Westmeath won a Leinster title, what do we want?

"What I'd love to see is Kilkenny back winning an All-Ireland. For Kilkenny to go 11 years without an All-Ireland, that's unheard of.

"I'd love to see Wexford back competing in an All-Ireland semi-final, and bringing 60,000, 70,000 'Wexicans' to Croke Park. That's what I want to see."

In spite of this, there is a need to keep the holy grail - the Munster SHC - as it is for Mullane, who knows as well as anyone just how lucrative a prize it remains.

"People will disagree with me and say, 'no way, the Munster championship has to stay the way it is'."

"There's still prestige in winning the Munster championship. There's still prestige in winning the Leinster championship.

"They'll still generate money. Obviously they're not going to have the same revenue in regards to what they're generating the last couple of years. But here's the catch.

"What an awful lot of the hurling fraternity will say is that, all the games are being rushed off in April and May and come June, July, then we're just left with a sprinkle of games.

"That's when football is exploding and it's exploding where they've loads of games. We've got to flip that over where we kind of just kind of slowly grow into it in April and May and then come June, July, we've the bulk of all our games.

Mullane questioned the decision not to even vote at congress on a two week extension to the championship when "there's no inter-county games on the tv" on an August bank holiday weekend, citing the football final as "probably one of the best things I've ever seen in my time watching the GAA", but adding "there's an awful lot of problems in regards to exposure".

Earlier in the week, Mullane's former teammate Stephen Molumphy was ratified as Waterford's latest manager, which the former De La Salle forward heralded.

"I think he will gain huge respect straight away within the Waterford dressing room off the back of his playing career. But for me, I think Stephen Molumphy will be great", Mullane said of the move.

"I've no fear of what Stephen Molumphy will bring to the table, but the way it is now, it's who you surround yourself with."

"The nearly most important person now within a GAA management team now is your head coach. You look around, Paul Kinnerk, head coach with Limerick, Mikey Bevans, head coach with Tipperary.

"But I think it's key that he surrounds himself with some very good men."

Click here to read article