All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship

All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship
Current season or competition: 2015 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship
File:All Ireland hurling logo.PNG Purple and Liam
Irish	Craobh Shinsear Iomána na hÉireann
Founded	1887
Region	Ireland (GAA)
Trophy	Liam McCarthy Cup
No. of teams	14
Title holders	Kilkenny (35th title)
First winner	Tipperary (26 titles)
Most titles	Kilkenny (35 titles)
TV partner(s)	RTÉ, Sky Sports, BBC, Setanta Sports, Premier Sports, Seven (Australia)
Motto	"Nothing beats being there"
Official website	http://www.gaa.ie

The Liam McCarthy Cup, the holy grail of hurling

The All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship, the premier competition in hurling, is an annual series of games played in Ireland during the summer and early autumn, and organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Contested by the top inter-county hurling teams in Ireland, the tournament has taken place every year since 1887—except in 1888, when the competition was not played due to a tour of the United States by would-be competitors.

The final, usually held on the first Sunday of September, serves as the culmination of a series of games played during the summer months, and the results determine which county's team receives the Liam McCarthy Cup. Where five Sundays occur in September (as in 2012 and 2013), the final is held on the second Sunday in September. The Championship was initially a straight knockout competition open only to the champions of each of the four provinces of Ireland. During the 1990s the competition was expanded, firstly incorporating a "back-door system" and later a round-robin group phase involving more games. The Championship currently consists of several stages. In the present format, it begins in late May with provincial championships held in Leinster and Munster. Once a team is defeated in the provincial stage they are granted one more chance to compete for the title. The Munster and Leinster champions gain automatic admission to the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship semi-finals, where they are joined by the two winners of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship qualifiers via two lone quarter-finals.

Thirteen teams currently participate in the Championship, the most dominant teams coming from the provinces of Leinster and Munster. Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary are considered "the big three" of hurling. Between them, these teams have won 90 out of 126 (approx 72%) championships completed during its history. The title has been won by 13 different teams, 10 of which have won the title more than once. The all-time record-holders are Kilkenny, who have won the competition 35 times.

The All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final was listed in second place by CNN in its "10 sporting events you have to see live", after the Olympic Games and ahead of both the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Football Championship. After covering the 1959 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final between Kilkenny and Waterford for BBC Television, English commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme was moved to describe hurling as his second favourite sport in the world after his first love, soccer. The current All-Ireland champions are Kilkenny.

History

Main article: History of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship

Following the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association on November 1, 1884, one of the association's early aims was the promotion of a national competition that involved the Gaelic games of Gaelic football and hurling. At the third meeting of the new organisation in January 1885, new rules for the ancient game of hurling were drawn up and were soon published in local newspapers throughout the country. In 1886 county boards were created to run the affairs of the various counties that participated in the competition. By 1887 the first All-Ireland Hurling Championship took place with five teams participating.

For the first few years of the championship the various counties were represented by the team who won the county club championship. For instance, the 1887 championship saw Thurles representing Tipperary and Meelick representing Galway. Dedicated inter-county teams were only introduced in 1895 when Cork put forward a mixture of all the best players from that county's best local clubs. Over the early years various changes were made in the rules of hurling, and its sister sport, Gaelic football. Teams were reduced from 21 players to 17 and eventually to the current number of 15, and the rules regarding the value of a goal were also tweaked in the first few years of the competition.

The provincial championships were introduced in 1888 in Munster, Leinster, Connacht and Ulster on a knock-out basis. The winners of the provincial finals participated in the All-Ireland semi-finals. Over time the Leinster and Munster teams grew to become the superpowers of the game, as Gaelic football was the more dominant sport in Ulster and Connacht. After some time Galway became the only credible team in Connacht and was essentially given an automatic pass to the All-Ireland semi-final every year. This knock-out system persisted for over 100 years and was considered to be the fairest system as the All-Ireland champions would always be the only undefeated team of the year.

In the mid-1990s the Gaelic Athletic Association looked at developing a new system whereby a defeat in the championship for certain teams would not mean an immediate exit from the Championship. In the 1997 championship the first major change in format arrived when the 'back-door system' was introduced. This new structure allowed the defeated Munster and Leinster finalists another chance to regain a place in the All-Ireland semi-finals. Tipperary and Kilkenny were the first two teams to benefit from the new system when they defeated Down and Galway respectively in the quarter-finals. The All-Ireland final in the first year of this new experiment was a replay of the Munster final with Clare defeating Tipperary. The first team to win the All-Ireland through the 'back-door' was Offaly in 1998, winning a replay of the Leinster final by beating Kilkenny 2-16 to 1-13.

The new 'back-door system' proved successful and was expanded over the following years. The 2005 Championship saw even bigger changes in the 'back-door' or qualifier system. Now the Munster and Leinster champions and defeated finalists automatically qualified for the new quarter-final stages. While two groups of four other teams played in a league format to fill the vacant four places in the quarter-finals. Many criticised the structure for not being a real championship at all, for degrading the Munster and Leinster championships and for penalising the strongest teams.

In 2008 the current championship structure was adopted, whereby the winners of the Leinster and Munster championships advanced to the All Ireland semi finals, and the 2 losers of the provincial finals advance to 2 quarter finals. A series of knockout qualifiers for the remaining teams decides what other 2 teams reach the quarter finals. The new qualifier structure, has provided more games and has given hope to the 'weaker' teams, as a defeat in the first round no longer means the end of a county's All-Ireland ambitions.