National Forum

A New Golden Age Of Hurling

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Replying To bronxirish:  "You need 12 counties before you consider it competitive? How long do you think you would wait before there are 12 football teams competitive at the highest level?

Hurling has 8 counties with who can compete at the highest level. How many does football have? 4? Maybe 5? Even then it's really 1 ahead of the rest and 4 or 5 competing for a chance to shock the country.

Hurling is miles and miles ahead of football in terms of parity despite the fact that so few compete for McCarthy vs Maguire."
Hurling is in a better state than it was 5/6 years ago, regarding genuine AI contenders, but its still a long way off football for general competitiveness. If inter-county hurling was generally as competitive as football, we wouldn't need 5 tiers in the hurling championship. And we'd be able to have all 4 provinces competing in the Liam McCarthy championship.
The Ulster Senior Hurling championship isn't even being played this year, its actually gone for the next 3 years at least, as far as I'm aware. And there's no Ulster U21 or minor championships being played this year either.

That being said, I'd be churlish not to recognize that the hurling championship has been far more competitive in the last 2 years, and I'm really looking forward to the 2 semi finals. And I'd have to recognize (grudgingly) that the absence of both Kilkenny and Tipperary from the last 4 is indication of a much healthier hurling landscape. But if you look below the top 8 teams, I'm not sure what direction hurling is generally going in.

Marlon_JD (Tipperary) - Posts: 1823 - 19/07/2018 23:41:36    2123903

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Replying To bronxirish:  "You need 12 counties before you consider it competitive? How long do you think you would wait before there are 12 football teams competitive at the highest level?

Hurling has 8 counties with who can compete at the highest level. How many does football have? 4? Maybe 5? Even then it's really 1 ahead of the rest and 4 or 5 competing for a chance to shock the country.

Hurling is miles and miles ahead of football in terms of parity despite the fact that so few compete for McCarthy vs Maguire."
You have a very low threshold if football is your yardstick. It's golden age is long gone, as the muck played last weekend showed and most weekends show. For instance Galway vs Kerry was competitive but it was still muck. I'm not into comparisons or using yardsticks. I'm talking about taking hurling on its own merits.

PoolSturgeon (Galway) - Posts: 1902 - 20/07/2018 01:10:32    2123920

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