28-05-2025
Former inter-county boss says 'hurling under threat' and rubbishes split season
Former Wexford manager Tony Dempsey has claimed that hurling is 'under threat' and insists that prime Championship action must be restored to the summer months.
Of the 11 counties that partake in the top tier, the campaign is over for five of them as of last Sunday, including Dempsey's native county.
Indeed, Wexford had been eliminated from the Championship seven days before they played their final game against Kilkenny last Sunday, which was a dead rubber in Chadwicks Wexford Park, while outgoing All-Ireland champions Clare were in the same predicament ahead of their trip to Limerick.
And although Offaly and Antrim jousted to avoid relegation in Tullamore on Sunday, it was guaranteed to be their last game of the year regardless of the outcome.
"We're bitterly disappointed because the summer is when young people share the joy of school holidays with being able to watch their elite performers - in our case Lee Chin and Rory O'Connor - and not only to watch them but to enjoy them without the problem of trying to attend school on a Monday," Dempsey told RTE's Morning Ireland.
"So school holidays will now be a time for Wexford, Waterford and of course Clare and many other counties when the performers will be gone from there. We won't be able to see them.
"The reality is we promote and market our games - every sport that does that through the performance of their best elite athletes. We hand over the summer, the best time for an elderly person or a youngster who doesn't have the worry of school to attend and to support and to watch our hurlers and indeed our footballers. So we've handed it over to other sports."
The split season model, which sees the inter-county season wrap up some two months earlier than was traditionally the case, was introduced to give a clear run for club games in the second half of the year but Dempsey described the notion that the club and county can't run in tandem as 'nonsense'.
"You could start your club championships and play inter-county games at the same time. It's happened for over a century.'
Saying that 'hurling is under threat', Dempsey, who is also a former county board chairman, acknowledged that the likes of Wexford and Waterford could drop into the Joe McDonagh Cup, something that nearly befell his own county two years ago.
'Hopefully that won't happen but there is a danger that it can happen.
"You perform best during summer, you improve your skills, you hone your skills in summer. County teams in Wexford, now that's gone. We're not in minor, we're not in under-21, we're not in senior.
"So I think it's possible to have competitions for our clubs and inter-county during the best time of the year."
Dempsey's comments come in light of Waterford manager Peer Queally and his Offaly counterpart Johnny Kelly decrying the fact that their season is over before the month of May is out.
Speaking after defeat to Cork sealed his side's elimination last Sunday, Queally said: 'I've had conversations with fellas who have decided to opt out because of, 'Well, I can give all this and I might not be able to hurl in the summer.'
'People are deciding not to play because of the amount of effort and training that's asked of them all through the winter months.
'Then you come up against three awesome hurling teams and you're putting away your hurley in the summer evenings when all you want to do is hurl."
He added: 'Maybe it's following suit with our football counterparts, where you have your provincial Championship and then you have your All-Ireland series.'
Kelly, meanwhile, said that the split season 'isn't working' after watching his side beat Antrim.
He said: 'I was an advocate of the split season at the start because, honestly, it's no harm to try these things and see. But it isn't working in my view anyway. There's a couple more around that have the same view.
'I was even down at my own club training [on Sunday morning] in Portumna, watching the boys train. So, we have one set of players that are actually [playing] five games in six weeks. Then we have another set of players, club players, that are ambling around since last January with no game in sight, waiting for the thing to finish.'
