Cork and Kerry will be seeded in separate semi-finals in this autumn’s 2026 Munster senior football championship draw.
The decision was made by the provincial council at a meeting on Thursday evening. Cork and Kerry will be drawn in opposite semi-finals by virtue of their league positions this season.
Despite strong opposition in the likes of Clare who have contested the last three Munster finals and Tailteann Cup runners-up Limerick, Cork, because of their Division 2 status ahead of Clare and Limerick in Division 3 from 2026, have been given a bye to the last-four along with All-Ireland champions Kerry.
A statement from Munster GAA read: “At tonight’s Munster Council meeting, a proposal that the highest two ranking teams from the Allianz Football League are placed on opposite sides of the Semi Final Draw for the following year’s Munster Senior Football Championship draw was ratified for a 3 year period beginning in 2026.
“For the 2026 Munster Senior Football Championship, Kerry and Cork as the two highest ranking Munster teams in the 2025 Allianz Football League will be placed on opposite sides of the Semi-Final draw.”
How the squads from the other four counties will react to the move will be interesting. Eleven years ago, the Gaelic Players Association were integral in their squads protesting against what they perceived as the preferential treatment shown to Cork and Kerry.
At the end of 2013 and into ’14, Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford threatened to pull out of the 2015 Munster SFC if Cork and Kerry’s seeded status continued. They refused to play in that year’s McGrath Cup leaving Cork and Kerry to compete in the pre-season competition along with the likes of UCC, UL, Cork IT, IT Tralee and LIT.
From 2015, the counties and the council compromised on the previous year’s finalists earning semi-final byes in the following year’s championship but no guarantee they would avoid each other in the last four.
That criteria has been operative ever since and in 11 seasons Cork and Kerry have met in five finals.
In 2007, Limerick players selected to line out for Munster in the interprovincial series after the province chose to seed Cork and Kerry for the following year’s championship. Between 2009 and ’13, the draw was open.
In his Munster final match programme notes, provincial chairman Tim Murphy said they had to look at ways of reviving interest in the competition. This year’s total attendances (five games) amounted to 33,491. In 2024, it was 36,264 and 28,158 in ’23.
Murphy wrote: “It is incumbent on us as a provincial council to review and consider what we can do better to further enhance Gaelic football as a spectacle within Munster and create the conditions and structures necessary to improve and enhance the game for players and spectators alike.
“We will be discussing this and working on what we can do to achieve the best possible outcome over the coming weeks and months.”