Round Robin structure for 2018 hurling championships

The 2018 Hurling Championship promises to be a very different affair with a round robin system to be implemented after the proposal was passed at Saturday’s  Special GAA Congress in Croke Park on Saturday.

What happened?

Central Council’s motion passed narrowly with 62\% voting in favour and 38\% voting against. Motions from Cork, Dublin and Tipperary were earlier rejected as the Central Council motion had secured 90 of the 152 votes available in the original ballot.

That meant a second round of voting which saw the Central Council’s proposal clear the magic 60\% mark.

What does it all mean?

What it all means in a five team Munster and Leinster championships played on a round robin basis with each team having two home and two away games. The top two teams in each provincial group face-off in the provincial final. The winner of the provincial final will advance to the All Ireland semi final while the loser will go into a quarter final.

The third place team in each province will play one of the top two teams from the newly created tier two competition – possibly to be called the Joe McDonagh Cup – in a preliminary quarter-final with the two winners going forward to the quarter-finals.

If the team that wins the tier two competition is from Leinster they will be promoted straight to the provincial championship the following season with the bottom team dropping down. If Kerry top the round robin, they will have to play-off against the bottom team in Munster to earn promotion.

An amendment was proposed to this to allow straight promotion and relegation between teams in Munster, but this was rejected by the majority of the 153 delegates voting at Croke Park.

GAA President 'happy' that All Ireland Hurling Championship motions were passed at Special Congress ⬇️https://t.co/eCeSLXu31i

— The GAA (@officialgaa) October 1, 2017

The counties that will compete in the Tier 2 championship will be Antrim, Carlow, Kerry, Laois, Meath and Westmeath. The majority of changes were made on a three-year experimental basis to run between 2018 and 2020.