Debate needed on McDonagh Cup future as Cork come to town

by Kevin Egan

Since the start of the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals, there was never a third-placed team that looked as strong as Cork do right now. And that’s the team that newly-crowned Joe McDonagh Cup champions Offaly have to face in Tullamore on Saturday (5.15pm).

With the prospect of taking on a behemoth like Cork, now resurgent on the back of a win over Limerick and a crushing defeat of Tipperary in Semple Stadium, one could forgive the Offaly players for thinking that this is a headache they don’t need.

The Rebels have found their form and there is a feeling in the county that not alone are they certain to get back to an All-Ireland semi-final and set up a rematch with Limerick, but that they are ready to topple the Munster and All-Ireland champions at that stage of proceedings.

Whether that’s the case or not is another matter, but if Cork can replicate the quality of their last two outings, they would leave a lot of Liam MacCarthy teams trailing in their wake. If Offaly’s preparation for this tie was perfect, with a lead-in of a couple of weeks and no shift in focus from one competition to another, this would still represent a massive challenge.

The scars of last year’s defeat to Tipperary – even if it was on the back of a defeat last time out – may concentrate minds a little bit, and Offaly can certainly afford to hurl with freedom and abandon, given that this will still go down as an incredibly successful season, regardless of the result tomorrow.

The arrival of hordes of Cork supporters will add to the atmosphere around Tullamore, and no doubt plenty of Offaly supporters will turn out too, if only just to greet and appreciate the team for what they’ve achieved so far.

But in terms of the result, keeping the margin to anything around the eight to ten points mark would be impressive, and even that’s probably a bridge too far.

Taking a broader view, this is now the time for Offaly to start thinking strategically about the future of the Joe McDonagh Cup, and how to position it to be of the greatest benefit to all counties involved. It would be in keeping with GAA tradition for Offaly to take the view that they’ve climbed out of the second tier so it’s not a concern any more, but it would be foolish not to consider the possibility that in all likelihood, the loser of Offaly and Antrim’s clash in 2025 will be the overwhelming favourites to make the drop back down to that level.

When the McDonagh Cup was first brought into existence, one of the key selling points was that there would be a route back on to the main stage built into the competition. The vote to put the competition in place, replacing the “weak group” in the Leinster championship, was barely carried – 62% of delegates at the 2017 Special Congress voted in favour, with a 60% threshold for the motion to pass.

Offaly, Laois and Meath proposed an amendment that the two finalists would still go back into the Liam MacCarthy competition in a preliminary quarter-final, and this was comfortably passed, with 87% of delegates voting in favour. Seven years on, only one Joe McDonagh team has ever won this fixture, the majority of teams have been well-beaten, and there is very limited appetite to continue with the fixture.

The existence of these games forces the Joe McDonagh Cup to be played very early in the year and to be run off at speed, and while the ‘Joe Mac’ winners might not mind a tilt at a big team, it’s been torture for the side that has just lost the championship that they were building towards all year.

After this weekend’s games in Tullamore and Portlaoise, there will be just five All-Ireland SHC games left to be played in 2024. If the Joe McDonagh Cup was played in May and June, culminating in a final that would be played as curtain raiser to one of the All-Ireland SHC semi-finals, it would be a much bigger event as hurling supporters would get to spend some time thinking about it, as opposed to games being played up against the brighter attractions of Munster and Leinster round robin games.

Parceling off the TV rights to TG4 would give the competition a further boost, as would moving games away from the graveyard slot of early Saturday afternoon. For those Leinster counties involved, with limited travel time, Friday night could be an attractive alternative. Perhaps even a midweek round, even if it’s confined to local derby games amongst Leinster counties, would help to take the competition out from the shadow of the provincial championships.

Furthermore, this is a glorious opportunity for Offaly to propose the removal of the link to the same year’s MacCarthy Cup, and also to address the anomaly that the relegated team automatically should be the one that finishes bottom of the Leinster championship. Would Carlow beat Tipperary in a one-off game this year? Almost certainly not, but it would be interesting to see if they could reach the heights that they reached against Kilkenny, when they secured a draw. Would Tipperary have been vulnerable when they finished bottom in 2022?

If the future of the Joe McDonagh Cup is left up to the counties like Cork, Limerick and Galway, whose sole motivation is to remove the inconvenience of having to play this preliminary quarter-final fixture and possibly to secure re-entry for the fourth-placed team in the provincial championships, then no-one will try to make it better.

Offaly have the experience and the understanding to take the lead on this matter, and to take a positive step towards ensuring that if there is a return to McDonagh Cup hurling in 2026, 2027 or beyond, then at least it will be a much more attractive competition by the time that happens.