Some spirit to come through it, but God, this wasn’t fair on anybody.
Crecora and Ballyagran were level, 1-8 apiece after extra-time in their Limerick intermediate camogie final on Saturday afternoon.
Limerick Intermediate Camogie Championship Final.
Ballyagran 1-8 Crecora 1-8 (AET)@LimCamogie— Matt O'Callaghan (@MattOCall) October 13, 2018
The Limerick or indeed the Munster camogie association hadn’t taken into account the real possibility of the teams tying, and so the provincial semi-final of the competition was fixed for the Sunday, the following day.
Even if the game hadn’t ended in a draw, it wouldn’t have been one bit fair on the winners to go out in a Munster semi-final less than 18 hours after they’d won a county crown.
Seeing as the game did end in a draw, it all turned into a bit of a farce.
Fairness doesn’t often dictate when it comes to situations like these and it gets even worse than a team having to play the two biggest games of their lives in less than two days.
Because, rather than pushing the Munster last four clash back a week, or even two weeks to allow the Limerick championship be decided first, it was decided that Crecora would go through ahead of Ballyagran in Munster on the basis of them scoring first in extra-time.
Let’s just think about Ballyagran’s situation first, because with Crecora somehow going onto beat the Waterford champions Dungarvan to progress to a Munster final, it’s Ballyagran who are the real losers here.
Ballyagran won every game they played this year prior to the final. They didn’t lose their Limerick final and the possibility of progression to the honourable occasion of a Munster semi-final should still be a real thing.
Instead, with a rule that roars of one that was made up on the spot, the whole Munster intermediate camogie championship is undermined because of the chance that the best team mightn’t even be playing in it.
They will have a replay to decide the Limerick final in the coming weeks, but that’s not the point here.
Crecora, to their credit, somehow defied tiredness and unfairness to beat Dungarvan by 12 points in the Munster semi.
Despite playing a county final and Munster semi-final in 18 hours Crecora Camogie won the latter today beating Dungarvan 2-12 to 1-3.@LimCamogie
— Matt O'Callaghan (@MattOCall) October 14, 2018
On the same weekend, a provincial camogie final was fixed at the same time, more than 200 miles away from a provincial football final in London with three players involved with both teams.
One of the teams, Kingdom Kerry Gaels would go onto forefit their provincial final because of the unfairness of it all.
Just another weekend in women’s GAA.
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