If there is one thing we have learned in recent years, it's that is incredibly difficult to break into the top table of inter-county hurling.
In contrast to football where great teams from various counties come in cycles (along with the usual suspects such as Kerry and Dublin), it seems that you have the same handful of counties competing for the big honours in the small ball year after year.
A number of teams, such as Westmeath, Kerry, and Carlow, have made strides over the last couple of decades, although they still remain on the bubble of the Liam MacCarthy and look no closer to challenging the more traditional counties in the sport.
Antrim are another case of side on that bubble, with many feeling the GAA are missing a trick by not doing more to improve the standard of hurling in the Ulster county.
Speaking on the RTÉ GAA Podcast, Dónal Óg Cusack said the Association need to commit to upping the standard of hurling in the likes of Antrim in Kerry if they have any genuine interest in growing the game across the island of Ireland.
I think it's really important for hurling, even rising above county bounds and stuff like that, we need a strong Antrim.
How is it that we only have so many strong hurling teams? The Division 2 final when you look at the likes of Down and Westmeath. Westmeath beat Kerry. You’d have to ask, and this was in my head coming home from Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Saturday night thinking about the two games, has the GAA failed hurling?
Has that county board structure that we have, those county boards are in place and that structure is there for 150 years now nearly. We have only a couple of top class hurling teams.
You listen to what the GAA have said about reducing funding in Dublin, and I was all for positive discrimination towards the capital. It’s critical that in the capital of our country that the GAA is very strong, we know that.
You take Belfast, is that our next biggest population centre? Definitely one of them. Could there be a real project, why does it have to be under the county board auspices?
A real mission to say 'we’re going to now try and do what we did in Dublin’ and I don’t know how much it was but it definitely had a positive impact on Dublin.
Can we now do that in the likes of Belfast or, for example, in Kerry? Like Killarney and Tralee, look at the size of those places there yet are the county board in Kerry really treating hurling seriously or are they saying that’s a north Kerry kind of thing?
Improving hurling in Antrim should indeed be a priority got the GAA, as it should be for all other counties that have a genuine intent the small ball in their locality.
That could only be good for the sport in the long-term, although how committed they are to looking beyond those traditional hurling strongholds is certainly up for debate.
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