a great chance of winning<\/a> the All-Ireland this year, and I wonder if that was to happen, would we be having all these conversations? Maybe not.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nLeddy knows any rescheduling will have to work for the counties. \u201cI will absolutely respect counties’ view on that because they’re the ones that won the club championships. I’ve said in the past the most important thing we’ve ever done for club players was create the split season, so we have to protect that proper championship window for clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leddy strenuously defends the format and qualification system of the Munster SHC. To those who claim he is protecting a competition which reaped over \u20ac8m in gate receipts last year, he says it\u2019s a success story that is worth preserving.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe round-robin format in both Munster and Leinster has been excellent for hurling and has given hurling a massive profile, and particularly over the last couple of years. We’ve seen full stadiums, big days in Ennis and Thurles and Cork. That can only be good for the promotion of the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever about protecting the golden goose and all that stuff, as far as I’m concerned, it is working. It is generating massive profile interest, viewing figures. We must surely be the only organisation in the world that would then consider getting rid of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the calls for an augmented All-Ireland series with two more quarter-finals, Leddy is not in favour. \u201cAt some stage, you\u2019re going to have to start knocking out teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a final, you’re going to have to have a two-week gap to the semi-final, you’re going to have to have a two-week gap to the quarter-final. You can’t keep virtually everybody in the championship until that stage because then it kind of makes everything else before us pointless in some respects.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former GAA president Nickey Brennan has been tasked with reviewing the Leinster senior hurling championship. It\u2019s not Leddy\u2019s place to advice another province. He just understands why the Munster SHC has been successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cA competition works when the teams participating are of a similar standard. If you expand it and you bring in teams not at that standard, I’m not sure what it does for those teams or the competition itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Munster, you have four games and that\u2019s a lot of championship matches. Just ask the football counties. I\u2019ve no doubt that had Waterford come out of Munster in the few years, we wouldn’t be having these conversations as much.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut to be fair to them, a lot of it has been just sheer hard luck. They were very competitive this year. It was rotten luck and injuries that cost them. That’s the thing with a championship \u2013 you want games to have that jeopardy.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust look at football when they introduce groups of four with three coming out. You The public lost interest in it and it fell away because you could win a match, lose the next two, and you were through.<\/p>\n
\u201cFootball recognised that and went away from it. It’s probably landed on a system that works and maybe there’s some flaws in it or whatever. Of course, I’m sure some counties will argue there is, but in terms of excitement and jeopardy and crowds, it’s working.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Munster GAA chief executive Kieran Leddy says a shift forward in the schedule of the All-Ireland senior hurling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[177329,1965,72371,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-525670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-championship-2026","tag-hurling","tag-munster-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525670","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=525670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}