This year’s county hurling and football leagues have been deemed a huge success.
That’s according to County CCC secretary Tom Maher who has been reflecting back upon this year’s leagues as they come to a conclusion.
The hurling leagues finished this past weekend, with the football finals down for decision next weekend.
Tom Maher says starting the leagues a month later this year was a big help:
“I think, in my time, this year’s league has been the best we’ve had.
“We’ve had very little walkovers, the games were played in great spirit and they went on week after week with hurling and football.
“In total, between the hurling and football, we’re going to end up with 260 league games played, which is quite good and we had about nine walkovers.
“That is very good, other years we wouldn’t have that many games, we would have games called off or the weather, we were lucky with the weather this year but I suppose we started the leagues a small bit later and I think that’s a great help.
“I think they were a great success this year.”
There was no promotion or relegation in this year’s league, which is something Tom would be interested in overturning if the conditions are right:
“I’d be a great believer in promotion and relegation.
“The big problem with promotion and relegation is you find that the following year some clubs don’t enter.
“You have a group then or a division and from the promotion and relegation the year before you have your six teams in the group but you find that maybe two of them are gone because they didn’t enter this year.
“Then you have to bring up two teams from a lower division to play the higher division to make it six teams in the group and they’re complaining because they’re playing in a section that’s too high for them and they are getting beaten.
“So, I think to have promotion and relegation, you’re going to have to have a buy-in from the clubs that they are going to go into the league and they’re going to stay in the league.”
