Munster Chairperson Ger Ryan hoping for another thrilling championship

By Shane Brophy

There are four seasons in the year and four seasons in the GAA.

Next weekend sees the high point in the province of Munster with the start of the marquee senior hurling championship with Waterford hosting Cork and the mouth-watering clash of great rivals Clare and Limerick in Ennis.

However, it is only a small part of an exciting period where between March 15th and the start of the under 20 football championship to June 9th when the senior hurling final takes place, Munster Council will have scheduled 64 games in 87 days.

It requires a lot of planning and preparation to have everything in place for the teams from the six counties to the referees, and then also the supporters who make the game experience what it is.

The man at the helm of the Munster Council and making sure it all runs off as well as it does is Templederry native Ger Ryan who is in his final year as the chairperson of the provincial council.

“This is a very exciting period,” he said at the launch of the 2024 Munster Championships in Cahir.

“We go through four cycles; the club games, the inter-county games, then two periods of administration and meetings which most people aren’t generally interested in, but it keeps us busy which is good as there is a lot of important work done then.

“But really it is about our games and the inter-county season at minor, under 20 & senior, and most emphatically the senior hurling championship which really drives Munster activity in the period from April right through to June 9th when we have the Munster Hurling Final.”

Round-Robin Success

This year is the fifth iteration of the round-robin format in the senior hurling championship which started in 2018 but was straight knockout in 2020 and 2021 due to the impact of Covid on the schedule.

The Munster Championship, in particular, has proven to be a resounding success right from the start, particularly the competitiveness of the games, where the margins are so fine, a team could be knocked despite not playing that poorly, with Cork last year being the perfect example as they arguably performed better than the year before when they finished in the top 3.

“If you tried to predict how could this work as well as it possibly could you wouldn’t have come up with what happened,” Ryan admitted.

“Particularly last year in terms of the closeness of the games, the best example being Cork, if they had scored one more point in one of three more games, they would have gone through, that is how tight the margins were. We were down to the last seconds on the last day.

“We couldn’t have wished for any better that it has turned out to be tremendously competitive. The key to it, obviously some teams will go better than others but realistically it is possible for each of the five teams to qualify at the start and that drives the competition.

“The almost week-on, week-off nature of it, or the fortnight-on, fortnight-off, at times, is that people are always looking forward to the next iteration and that generates excitement around the counties. The fact that if you are away in the first game and you get a result that is a huge boost, or if you lose you are under pressure to win your home games. Teams like Tipperary this year that start with two away games, if they can get a result in one of those games even, it sets them up well for their home games and if they don’t, they will be under pressure in their home games.

“So, you are seeing the whole emotional journey of sport, the highs and the lows, are built into the structure of the championship and we are fortunate there aren’t massive gaps between top and bottom.”

As exciting as the Munster Championship is, it has its drawbacks in that it is an unfair structure with having five teams as it requires one team to be off in each round. That impacts scheduling in terms of ensuring teams don’t have to play three weekends in a row, but to achieve that it means, in any year, two counties having to start with two home or away games, as befalls Waterford and Tipperary this year.

However, it is only a minor drawback as is shown by the crowds that are attending the senior hurling championship games.

“We had over 300,000 people at Munster Hurling Championship games last year for the first time ever,” Ryan revealed.

“So, we are grateful to people for coming. It does require that games are competitive and that every round is competitive so to achieve that again more or less requires the same, take the Tipp v Cork game in round 4 this year for example, you could have a huge attendance at that, but if for one reason or another either team doesn’t have a chance, that could reduce the attendance so we are dependent on a round to round basis.

“It is hugely beneficial to us, ultimately we are here to serve the counties and make sure our games are supported and developed, and we do that in multiple ways such as coaching & games activity, and through club and county infrastructural projects, and people coming to our games enables us to do that.”

Admission Price Increase

Despite the financial boon that the senior hurling championship has provided to the coffers of the Munster Council in recent years, they have still taken the decision to increase admission prices for this year’s games by €5, with the aim improving the spectator experience at stadia in the province with all grounds looking for investment for upgrades, while they are also looking at the possibility of developing an Air Dome in the province, similar to the one developed in Connacht.

“We announced at our convention earlier this year a development plan where we would look at a feasibility study on a Dome,” Ryan added.

“I do think it is worth looking at, and I am not saying what the outcome will be, but we will be getting some professional assistance in the next number of months. We will look at five or six locations around the province and get some recommendations of where the best place is to do it, and what sort of construction it would be. We would take a lot of information from what has happened in Connacht.

“Also, we do have four major stadia in the province (FBD Semple Stadium, SuperValu Pairc Ui Chaoimh, TUS Gaelic Grounds and Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney) and then Cusack Park in Ennis and Walsh Park in Waterford, and that has seen great development there.

“But in terms of our big stadia, they all need support in different ways, Thurles in particular, is requiring maintenance support in order of €3.5 million over the next three years, and all that will do is maintain the stadium. It won’t show a huge amount of benefit in terms of spectator experience but is necessary to maintain an old stadium and will require further maintenance as well.

“So, one of the reasons we are increasing ticket prices is in order to enable us to provide a proper experience for those that come to our games, and that involves us along with Central Council and the counties themselves.”

Infrastructural Support

With most counties under major financial pressure to cover the cost of the preparation of inter-county teams from under 14 to senior level every year, with Tipperary planning for a cost of €2.1 million this year, having to look after an aging Semple Stadium is another millstone around the neck so does the Munster Chairperson feel Croke Park should be providing more financial support to counties to take the pressure off in terms of stadium maintenance and improvements.

“At the end of the day, counties have to be, by and large, accountable for their own county grounds,” Ryan said.

“But we (Munster Council) have committed over the next five years, and hopefully we will be able to do it over a shorter period, to invest over €7 million between the six counties, which you might say isn’t a whole lot, but in many respects there is a lot of fundraising in seven million so we are delighted to be able to do that. It is a challenge and counties are under pressure.

“One of the things that will be interesting to see with the new Uachtaráin (Jarlath Burns) announcing a review of the whole area of the amateur status and seeing the amount of cost and effort that goes into preparing inter-county teams, and are we going to see some changes there because counties are under pressure and want to compete at the highest level.

“And if you look at a county like Tipperary, it always has high ambitions in hurling and has had a great era in football and is probably in a development phase now where they will want to get back up there to be more competitive so that does require a lot of cost and there are a lot costs at present.

“I think we are going to have to make a lot of big decisions in the GAA about where we spend our money because it is finite, and with integration coming up, we need to have much better engagement with government and be open to having more municipal facilities because it doesn’t make sense to own everything ourselves.”