It is understood Ballygunner will field two teams in the 2026 Waterford Senior Hurling Championship.<\/p>\n
Having been crowned All-Ireland champions for the second time by virtue of their 1-20 to 1-14 win against Loughrea on Sunday, the D\u00e9ise kingpins are now set to field two senior sides later this year.<\/p>\n
Ballygunner won the Waterford Premier Intermediate Hurling Championship this year, defeating Tallow 1-21 to 2-11 in the county final.<\/p>\n
They had also won the tournament in 2022, seeing off Ballysaggart 2-29 to 3-20 – but did not have to take their place in the senior ranks on that occasion.<\/p>\n
As first reported by the Irish Examiner, despite some reluctance within the club and focus having been on the All-Ireland campaign, Ballygunner\u2019s second team, last year\u2019s premier intermediate county champions, will be treated as an entirely separate entity.<\/p>\n
The Waterford County Board have informed the club that the teams can\u2019t be kept separate at group phase, while the sides also can\u2019t be stopped from playing on the same day or time.<\/p>\n
A ruling to prohibit two teams from one club playing at the same level was discussed at Central Council in November but was then referred to a rules advisory committee.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s understood an alternative arrangement may be proposed at a meeting of the same body this weekend.<\/p>\n
Ballygunner may be afforded some flexibility in distinguishing the two separate panels, however not to the same extent as when they operated at two different grades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is understood Ballygunner will field two teams in the 2026 Waterford Senior Hurling Championship. Having been crowned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-255658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}