hurling should get rid of provincials and have an open draw of 2 groups of 5 or 6 group winners get bye to semi 2nd v 3rd in quarter final or an extra round of 3rd v 4th if we go with groups of 6 the bottom team in each group get relegated.
Football should also get rid of provincials for the very same reasons, but that's not going to happen and similar to hurling in Munster and Leinster it's all about who controls the purse strings.
I'm not a hurling follower but is there anything to back that staement from Jason Ryan up. The reality is those lower grade hurling competitions are literally irrelevant to media, supporters or hurling at large. Hurling is virtually dead in most of those counties and those tournaments did not improve things.
The majority of the hurling counties involved in these competitions outside of the Liam McCarthy are football dominated barring maybe Antrim and Laois, so it was of little consequence to these County boards when these competitions were voted in and IMO they're a good thing for hurling in these types of counties as at least they're competing at their level but hope of promotion but IMO there could be more done to promote teams into the round robins than is currently the case.
Are these same county boards who are football orientated going to say to themselves, nah, we're pants, lets not play in the Sam Maguire as we'll get mullered and play in the Tailteann cup?? Not likely if somewhat delusional.
Genuinely there's only really 5 or 6 counties capable of winning the AI football title maybe less but I'm being kind, with another half dozen competitive at that level, the rest will hope for a glory run once every blue moon but know that they'll take heavy beatings for 19 years out of 20..
