Hurl­ing’s A-list Lim­er­ick star has zero interest in All-Ire­land ‘B’ pro­posal

Right now, John Meyler and the Hurl­ing Expert Advis­ory Group are sift­ing through the 8,500 responses to the pub­lic sur­vey on the game of hurl­ing and try­ing to decide what is actu­ally action­able.

What change – if any – is mer­ited to the game when, as the former Cork man­ager him­self says: ‘The game of hurl­ing has never been in a bet­ter pos­i­tion.’

They’ve filtered all the responses down to ‘20 points that are stick­ing out like the hand­pass, steps, head-high tackles, they’re the most obvi­ous ones’.

John Meyler. Pic: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

While their remit is strictly around the game itself and any poten­tial rule changes or recom­mend­a­tions, he spoke strongly around the hot topic of Cham­pi­on­ship format change in last Sunday’s Irish Mail on Sunday.

Address­ing the issue of too many counties being knocked out early and not enough Cham­pi­on­ship games tak­ing place in June when there is a glut of foot­ball games, he argued against doing any­thing to under­mine the pro­vin­cial cham­pi­on­ships, par­tic­u­larly Mun­ster, which is set­ting records for attend­ances and gate receipts.

‘Don’t break the Mun­ster model. The Mun­ster model is right. They’re work­ing their arse off.’ If counties want a longer sum­mer, he threw out a bit of a curve­ball by arguing for an All-Ire­land ‘B’ title.

Damien Cahalane of Cork in action against Gearóid Hegarty of Limerick. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

‘I think that the bot­tom two teams in Mun­ster, which would be Tip­per­ary and Water­ford this year, and the three bot­tom teams in Lein­ster – Kilkenny, Wex­ford and Kil­dare – plus the Joe McDon­agh team would go into two groups of three. Play off two matches there and have an All-Ire­land B final, if you want to call it that, before the All-Ire­land senior final.

‘But in one way, you’re react­ing to symp­toms here.’

Cer­tainly, it’s an inter­est­ing sug­ges­tion and one that doesn’t involve rip­ping up the exist­ing format. It also works in restor­ing a cur­tain-raiser to final day when one is sadly lack­ing since the removal of the minor All-Ire­land.

Willie Connors of Tipperary leaves the field after receiving a red card. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

And yet it’s hard to see that gain­ing trac­tion. The idea of Tip­per­ary for example, last year’s All-Ire­land cham­pi­ons, going full steam for a ‘B’ All-Ire­land is hard to ima­gine. Sim­il­arly, Kilkenny, the county who leads the game’s roll of hon­our.

The hurl­ing cham­pi­on­ship already has a five-tiered format, from Liam Mac­Carthy down to Lory Mea­gher Cup com­pet­i­tion. It’s hard to think that counties in one All-Ire­land will want to wrap their heads around another.

The Tail­teann Cup works because it is designed around the counties who don’t make the top 16 of the Sam Maguire Cup. Ima­gine ask­ing Donegal, after los­ing to Down in Ulster, about com­pet­ing for a ‘B’ All-Ire­land?

I asked Lim­er­ick hurler Gearóid Hegarty about this idea after he was hon­oured as the GAA GPA Player of the Month award for July. His reac­tion was instruct­ive.

PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month for July in hurling, Gearóid Hegarty of Limerick, with his award at Eyre Square in Galway. Pic: Tyler Miller/Sportsfile

‘From my own point of view, if we were knocked out, I per­son­ally wouldn’t have any interest in play­ing in a cur­tain-raiser… Per­son­ally, I wouldn’t have any interest in play­ing in a B final.

‘I don’t know if there’s a struc­ture that every­body will be happy with. I just think there’s noth­ing that can be done to keep every­body happy.

‘I’ve heard the argu­ment about the teams knocked out of Mun­ster this year – Water­ford and Tip­per­ary. But I’d always say this: you play four games in Mun­ster, there are only five teams and three come out. Sixty per cent of the teams come out of Mun­ster. Fifty per cent come out of Lein­ster. If you’re not good enough to fin­ish in the top three out of a group of five, well then, tough. Simple as that.

‘I don’t know if there’s a per­fect struc­ture that every­body will be delighted with. People are going to com­plain any­way, no mat­ter what you bring in.

‘Again, I’ll go back to the qual­ity of the hurl­ing in the Mun­ster cham­pi­on­ship. I thought the Lein­ster cham­pi­on­ship this year was out­stand­ing – maybe even bet­ter than Mun­ster from a com­pet­it­ive point of view. It’s def­in­itely the best Lein­ster cham­pi­on­ship there’s been in many years.

‘The two All-Ire­land semi-finals were superb. I didn’t see all of the quarter-finals, but the semi-finals were excel­lent games.

19 July 2026; Gearóid Hegarty of Limerick during the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Galway and Limerick at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile

‘Do people really want to go back? I was only talk­ing to my father about the days of knock­out hurl­ing. Teams could be gone in mid-May or the start of June – one game and you’re fin­ished until the fol­low­ing year. Nowadays, you’ve loads of games in the league, then your Mun­ster or Lein­ster Cham­pi­on­ship.

‘If you can’t get out of a group where 60 per cent of the teams qual­ify, well then, tough. That’s just the way I think about it. And look, it may hap­pen to us one day. Maybe it will. If it does, I won’t mince my words either. That’s just the way I feel about it.’

If Meyler’s group were look­ing for response num­ber 8,501, they cer­tainly got it.