Good morning comrades. This weekend we get another glimpse of Offaly and Carlow, who played out a great Joe McDonagh Cup final a few weeks ago.The immediate reward for both teams is to enter the All-Ireland series at this stage.
Carlow play Dublin, Offaly play Tipp.It's extremely likely that Carlow and Offaly will lose and neither team will play inter-county hurling again until next February.
By then the buzz from the Joe McDonagh will be long gone.They deserve better, and if we consider in almost 150 years of stewardship, the GAA has failed to expand the hurling map of Ireland even marginally, then hurling deserves better also.In fact, before the end of the Second World War, 11 different counties had won All-Ireland hurling titles.
Since then, just nine counties have. The last new name on the cup was Offaly themselves, way back in 1981. We haven't had a first-time All-Ireland finalist since then.