Wexford can lose three games and still win All-Ireland

Niall McIntyre

It will be different this year, that’s for sure.

The All-Ireland senior hurling championship has been revamped for 2018. The Leinster and Munster championships will be ran on a round-robin basis with each county having four matches at this stage of the competition on consecutive weekends.

Each team will have two home games and two away games (except for Waterford who will play all of their games away from home due to Walsh Park’s refurbishment not yet being complete).

The top two finishers in both groups will qualify for their respective provincial finals.
The winners of these deciders will instantly progress to the All-Ireland semi-finals.
The losers of the provincial finals go to the quarters.
The teams who finish in third place, meanwhile, will compete in a preliminary quarter-final.

The teams who come third and play in the prelim quarters will face the finalists in the second tier competition, the Joe McDonagh Cup. This competition will be contested by Antrim, Carlow, Kerry, Laois, Meath and Westmeath.

Permutations

It means, with a round robin format, there’s room for error for each team.

There are five counties competing in Munster and five counties in Leinster. Three of these teams will be progressing to the All-Ireland stages of the competition. Two will be gone after the group stages.

Kilkenny, Wexford and Galway are widely tipped to progress from the Leinster championship. It is no wonder why. Kilkenny and Wexford both enjoyed impressive League campaigns while Galway are the reigning All-Ireland champions and current favourites to lift Liam MacCarthy this September.

Dublin and Offaly will be hopeful they can upset the status quo but they’ll be up against it.

In championships past, teams only had two lives. Lose once in the provinces and once in the qualifiers and that was it, your summer was over. There was even a time when one loss in the provinces meant a county’s championship dreams were bust.

It’s all change this year.

In the Leinster championship in 2018, Kilkenny, Wexford or Galway could conceivably win just one game, lose their remaining three (draw one to be more safe), and still progress to the preliminary quarter-finals of the All-Ireland competition.

For that scenario to pan out, you’d need Wexford, Offaly and Dublin to all take points off each other – it’s more unlikely but still possible. Besides, three points could be enough to definitely see a team like Wexford through – beat Dublin, draw with Offaly and the rest should take care of itself so, really you could need just one win to advance to the knockout rounds – albeit further off the final.

If teams are tied on points after the group games, it will be decided by their head to head record – but only in the event of a two-way tie. If there are more than two teams tied on points, it’s down to points difference, where Wexford could be ahead of Offaly and Dublin.

Take Wexford for example.

Davy Fitzgerald’s men could lose to both Kilkenny and Galway in Leinster, and still go on to win the All-Ireland. Heck, they could even lose to Dublin or Offaly too. But, before they even play Kilkenny or Galway, they could have the back broken on their bid to get out of Leinster.

Wexford beat Dublin in their opener on May 12.
Wexford draw with Offaly on May 19.

If Kilkenny and Galway account for Dublin and Offaly, as they would be expected to, then Wexford would be going forward.

Graphic via RTÉ League Sunday.

Here are the Munster championship fixtures.

The Munster championship will be extremely competitive. There will be ten round-robin games and Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Tipperary and Clare will fancy their own chances going into each game.

With only three teams progressing, this means that two of these counties will be dumped out early. Getting off to a good start will be so important to each county.

Waterford will certainly be up against it, considering they’ll have to travel for each of their games.