*Ronan Lanigan tackles Micheál Burns in the Munster SFC semi-final. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
CLARE GAA’s Munster delegates are bringing forward a proposal to give permanent home advantage to counties competing against Cork and Kerry in the provincial semi-finals and finals of the senior championship.
Last July, it was decided following a vote to seed the two counties in Munster with the highest ranking in the National Football League in opposing semi-finals of the senior championship.
It was decided to pause the introduction of this seeded system in November for one year but it is set to come into effect for 2027 and 2028 which will leave Kerry and Cork, who both lost out in the Division 1 and 2 league finals respectively, seeded at either end of the semi-final draw.
Plans to seed the highest ranking counties in Munster were never floated by provincial officers during Clare’s eight seasons under Colm Collins competing in Division 2 of the Allianz National Football League. Based on performances in 2026, it cannot be argued that Kerry and Cork are the top two senior sides in Munster.
Both Joe Garry and John Callinan, Clare GAA’s Munster delegates have put a proposal before the provincial council that would give the unseeded counties of Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford permanent home advantage at the semi-final and finals of the Munster championship when facing off with Cork and Kerry for as long as the seeded format exists.
The Clare Echo understands that Garry, a former Clare U21 football manager has worked to compile a list of results dating back a quarter of a century to prove that games are a lot more competitive in the province when Kerry and Cork do not have home advantage against Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford.
This proposal is to be discussed and voted on at the July meeting of Munster Council. It was initially brought to the attention of officials and delegates from all counties in the province at their most recent meeting. It requires sixty percent support to be passed.
Should the proposal fail, it is expected that Clare will be rejecting the introduction of the seeded format.
Munster GAA Chairman, Tim Murphy said Clare GAA were within their democratic right to lodge the proposal. “At our last Council meeting, that proposal was raised by Clare, it was not voted on, all our delegates were made aware of it, it is up to each and every county to go back and look at the merits of that, it is not something which can be decided upon on a whim, hence the reason it was brought up at our last meeting to give counties plenty of time and ample opportunity to consider it and the merits or otherwise of going down that road, I am not going to comment either way of how the vote will go if there is a vote at the next meeting or the following meeting, that is the democratic nature of the Association we are all a part of, Clare are quite entitled to bring that motion forward, the counties of the province will ultimately decide”.
Speaking on a special Irish Examiner podcast, Murphy said not all of the four unseeded counties are against the proposed new format, the introduction of which has been delayed. “I wouldn’t subscribe to the view that every one of the four counties have an issue with the seeding, they obviously had concerns but we had a fairly frank and robust discussion at our Council meeting and afterwards when engaging with the counties and with the GPA, on balance there is an acceptance, it is not universal but the majority view would be that it is the right thing to try it for a three-year period, it is not set in stone but if we continued to allow an open draw to continue, the likelihood of totally imbalanced Munster finals would continue in the future”.
Explaining the rationale for the introduction of the seeded system, Kerry native Murphy outlined, “If you compare the Munster hurling to the Munster football, you have way more competition in the hurling because you have five counties in any given year that could beat one another, in football unfortunately that is not the case, you have Kerry well ahead of most other counties and Cork then coming in number two. As a concept, what I firmly believe in whether it is football or hurling, you should progress based on your merits and your capacity on the field to compete and win games, overall what we passed last year was exactly a seeded based championship which is based on the league, I think it is different this year to when other attempts made previously simply because the advent of the Tailteann Cup has in my view completely changed the landscape from 2026 to even ten years ago in 2016, the Tailteann is a league based system as to who participates in that so for me the logical extension to that in a province like ours where you have such an imbalance between counties in football that we had to make some intervention, to me the fairest way of doing that was a league based system, we put that to the Council and the Council approved that, notwithstanding the fact it didn’t come in for 2026 but it is important to say we did engage a lot with the counties in the province, the GPA extensively and a compromise was arrived at where a delay of twelve months was agreed upon and everyone signed up to that.
“The important thing for me to say is this is a pilot project for three years, for too many years and for far too long there is a reticence on the part of our Association to just try something new, my contention is we try it for three years, if it makes a meaningful difference then great and we can continue, if it doesn’t we don’t have to continue it, it is a democratic decision but I do think that a lot of the time are not that open to trying new things, somebody said to me years ago ‘tradition can be made in the future as much as in the past’ and I think that is trying to respect the traditions of all our counties but to try move it forward in a way that is meaningful and will develop football, that is only one part of what we are doing, the second part was setting up our football development committee. Getting the two best teams in any given year to the provincial final, in my view and in the Council’s view, it absolutely wasn’t a unanimous decision but it gives the province really great exposure which it did, it gives football really great exposure in the province and football whether we like it or not has been the poor relation to hurling in the province over the last number of years, it would be remiss of me as the Cathaoirleach not to try do something address that imbalance which is what we have done,” he added.
