It’s another game on the road for a new manager so it’s important . If it was year 3 it would be largely irrelevant
It has far more relevance than Dublin v Meath this weekend .
Dessie and the lads are just willing the league to be over so the serious business can start
As regards the hurling leagues . An overhaul is required to link it to championship. These games for the top sides are largely challenge matches
I’d nearly scrap the league and play Leinster home & away or play the Munster counties as well but keep the league table by province (like the do in American football). Or play the Leinster counties home and away and the Munster counties once could be a great aul mill up.
Important after two defeats (against two of the better sides in the country so far to be fair), that we get a good performance and a result. MD very much still trying guys out so likely that will continue. Kilkenny exposed a lot of flaws in the setup, too many to address in a week (year/decade), but some issues that will need addressing later if at all possible.
The first game in Leinster isn’t until the 22nd of April, so stupid long break now. We really do know how to piss away a calendar don’t we? The football league has more fixtures and Leinster starts on April 9th. 
In fairness the hurling semi finals (and relegation playoff) are next week with the final a fortnight later and then the C’ship starts a fortnight after that. This break is largely self inflicted.
I know right, always giving teams on a roll huge chunks of the calendar and everyone else sits it out. It’s the GAA way.
That’s the way of most sports though.
I’ll probably be proven wrong but can’t think of many sports with as strange a season structure.
American football only runs for a few months like the county season but it’s a much better structure with a league section followed by a short/sharp play off section. That’s what we ought to aspire to imo, instead of two competitions each with a silly short league section & playoffs.
Agree 100 percent . GAA calendar makes sense only to the people who run it who are miles from reality of the runaway train that is intercounty
I don’t understand why the GAA and GPA couldn’t agree to limit & police training limits that all countries agree to stick to.
I mean that the more successful you are the more games you get.
Everyone profits now
Managers
coaches
S and C
GPA funding is based on a cut of GAA revenue ( incrementing model)
It’s in their interests to train more as they get paid more .
You’d miss the aul club finals all the same, why not have some of the league games on today?
Sure but in American football it’s what 16 regular season games to 3 play off if you make it to the final? That’s a healthier ratio.
We have five league games for everyone with top teams getting another two, the five Leinster games with top teams getting the provincial final or prelim 1/4 final, 1/4 final, 1/2 final and final. So potentially another 4 games.
So some teams getting 5 league and 5 championship games = 10 games and other might have 7 league and 9 championship game = 16 games. An extra 60%. All sharing the same calendar space.
And the club is the same, or even worse, so some lads get a handful of games in the group, others go through coubty playoffs and on into Leinster and beyond if they’re good enough, doubling the games or more if they go far enugh
Should be balanced out to more games for everyone and one short/sharp play off section.
Panel selection will be interesting here, you’d like to think the championship team would be close to what we had vs KK and even more so this weekend?
Listening to James Skehill on The Hurling Pod, he said that MOD would be running the shite out of the lads all the way through the league, he said the training during the league was very tough with MOD and was fairly adamant we’d be going through a similar program.
I grew up going to the Railway Cup finals then the Club finals in Croker every St Patrick’s Day. This past few years St Patrick’s Day has been a boring day.
Laois
Can’t believe there are no changes from last week?
Giving them a chance to make amends I guess, managers seem to do it sometimes when there’s a total system failure. Also we do need to settle down a bit with the chopping & changing and give the team a Chance to settle. I know a lot of the changes were injury forced over the league.
Glad to see Sean currie is named, he looked in a Bad way going off, to use rugby parlance maybe it was a stinger, hurt the shoulder tackling someone.
