By John Harrington
Leinster GAA today unveiled what they hope will be the new structure for their senior provincial hurling championship from 2028 on.
The proposal, which will go before GAA Annual Congress next year, would see an eight-team Leinster SHC split into two groups of four.
Group A would comprise of the top four teams in Leinster by the end of the 2027 Leinster SHC.
Group B would be made up of the fifth and sixth placed teams from 2027 along with the two Joe McDonagh Cup finalists.
The top two teams from Group A would advance directly to the provincial semi-finals while the bottom two teams in Group A would play the top two teams in Group B in the quarter-finals.
The beaten semi-finalists would play off to determine who would be the third team from the province to quality for the All-Ireland SHC quarter-finals.
The bottom two teams in Group B would go on to participate in the Joe McDonagh Cup semi-finals.
Former GAA President, Nickey Brennan, chaired the workgroup tasked with coming up with the new structure and is confident it will prove popular with supporters.
“I do think they’ll be more battle-hardened going into the quarterfinals because they will have had a number of knock-out games as well as the Round Robin,” he says.
“Even something like the third team play-off, that will take place two weeks before the All-Ireland quarterfinal, so we do feel that having a real competitive game at that stage will put that team in a better position than perhaps it has been in the past.
“That’s the hope anyway, because I’m totally accepting that based on the 2026 All-Ireland quarterfinals, it was a non-show by Leinster teams, there’s no point in me saying everything, Dublin and Offaly just didn’t fire on those particular days.
“But hopefully the extra bit of competition that’s built in here around the knockout stages will put the teams in better shape going forward to take on the Munster counterparts.”
Brennan is very hopeful that Leinster GAA’s proposal will get the backing required at Annual Congress in February, 2027.
“I’d be very surprised if Congress didn’t applaud the fact that we’re very much integrating tier 2 counties and embedding them into the competition now at this stage, and I think it’s something to be applauded,” he said.
“I’m going around Congress a long time now not to make any assumptions though we will not take it for granted. We will certainly talk to those who will be attending Congress and explain our case to them to make sure that it does get passed.”
The Leinster GAA Hurling Championship Review Workgroup Report in full can be viewed and downloaded below👇
https://www.gaa.ie/api/images/image/upload/t_q-best/prd/gkvuehbfmmujda3rybgy.pdf
By Offaly Secretary Wed 7th Oct
