Niall Moran: GAA needs to start National Hurling League before Christmas

Niall Moran says the GAA will need to increase the gap between the National Hurling League and the Championship if they want counties to take it more seriously.

Until recently the old Division 1A of the league was seen as a real bear pit with six of the top counties battling to avoid relegation. The quality of the games that 1A provided set the teams in 1B, according to the wisdom of the day, at a disadvantage heading into the summer.

When Davy Fitzgerald took over Wexford ahead of the 2017 season he set promotion to 1A as one of his main targets to help get the Yellowbellies back at hurling's top table. Victories over Limerick and Galway would see him achieve it with his new squad in his first year.

The following year the Munster and Leinster championships were turned into round-robins which, when combined with the introduction of the split season last year, means that Division 1 finalists will only have two weeks to prepare their provincial opener.

Moran, who retired from Limerick in 2015, believes that this proximity the competition has to the championship makes it more difficult for teams to give the league a proper go.

"Ever since 1997 we've been betwixt and between, in terms of the structure of our national league," he said on RTÉ's Game On.

"This year's installment is the most worrying, in terms of how we set out our national league. With the round robin element of the Munster and Leinster championships it's meant the national league has lost some of its importance.

"Going back to when we would have played national league, you would have always looked for that period between the end of your league campaign and the start of the championship. There was always six-eight weeks, depending on when you finished up the league.

"I