*Brian McNamara and Joe O’Connor in action during this year’s Munster final. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
CORK and Kerry will be seeded in the Munster senior football championship semi-finals in a move which is seen as very damaging for football in the remainder of the province.
On Thursday night, Munster Council delegates voted in favour of re-introducing a format which seeded teams based on National Football League rankings rather than what has existed for the last eleven years where the finalists of the previous season are kept on opposite sides of the draw.
It is noteworthy that officials in Cork and Kerry did not attempt to bring back this system during 2018 to 2022 when Clare finished higher than Cork in the Allianz National Football League and the move comes at a time when Cork are in Division 2 and Clare in Division 3.
Officials from Clare revealed on Clare FM’s Morning Focus that it was Limerick who sided with Cork and Kerry.
Following Thursday’s meeting, Munster GAA in a statement confirmed, “At tonight’s Munster Council meeting, a proposal that the highest two ranking teams from the Allianz Football League are placed on opposite sides of the Semi Final Draw for the following year’s Munster Senior Football Championship draw was ratified for a 3 year period beginning in 2026.
“For the 2026 Munster Senior Football Championship, Kerry and Cork as the two highest ranking Munster teams in the 2025 Allianz Football League will be placed on opposite sides of the semi-final draw”.
Clare and Kerry have contested the last three Munster finals with the Kingdom reigning supreme on each occasion by fourteen, seven and eleven points respectively.
Chairman of Munster GAA in his notes for this year’s Munster final held in Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney stressed to need to increase interest and appetite in the provincial competition with falling attendances recorded. “It is incumbent on us as a provincial council to review and consider what we can do better to further enhance Gaelic football as a spectacle within Munster and create the conditions and structures necessary to improve and enhance the game for players and spectators alike. We will be discussing this and working on what we can do to achieve the best possible outcome over the coming weeks and months”.
Since 2015, finalists from the previous year have been seeded in opposite sides of the draw. Prior to this, Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford threatened to pull out of the championship if the preferential seeding of the big two continued. They refused to play in that year’s McGrath Cup leaving Cork and Kerry to compete in the pre-season competition against UCC, UL, Cork IT, IT Tralee and LIT.
