By John Harrington

Rarely has an All-Ireland Hurling Championship been as keenly anticipated as this summer’s.

Not just because there are now arguably more genuine contenders for the Liam MacCarthy Cup than at any time since the mid 1990s, but also because the Championship structure itself was so fundamentally changed by last year’s Special Congress.

No longer are the provincial championships knock-out competitions.

On a three-year trial basis, they will be run off on a round-robin basis with each of the five teams competing in Munster and Leinster playing two home matches and two away matches.

Tipperary, Cork, Waterford, Limerick, and Clare will contest the Munster Championship; with Kilkenny, Wexford, Galway, Dublin, and Offaly contesting the Leinster Championship.

The top two teams at the end of the Round Robin phase will then contest the Provincial Final, with the provincial winners advancing to the All-Ireland semi-finals and the beaten finalists advancing to the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

The third-placed team in each province will compete in the preliminary All-Ireland Quarter-Finals, where they’ll play away from home against the finalists of the newly created Tier Two Championship, the Joe McDonagh Cup.

Made up of six teams – Carlow, Laois, Meath, Westmeath, Kerry, and Antrim – the Joe McDonagh Cup will also be played off on a round-robin basis.

If the winner of the Joe McDonagh Cup is a non-Munster team, they’ll be promoted to the Leinster Championship and Liam MacCarthy Cup for 2019 where they’ll replace the bottom team in this year’s Leinster Championship.

If the winner is a Munster team (Kerry), they must win a Play-Off with the bottom team in the Munster Championship in order to gain promotion to the Munster Championship and Liam MacCarthy Cup for the 2019 season.

The sixth placed team after the round-robin phase of the Joe McDonagh Cup will be relegated to the Christy Ring Cup.

And in order to reduce the number of teams in the Joe McDonagh Cup to five for the 2019 campaign, the team that finishes 5th this year will play off against the Christy Ring Cup winners, with the winners of the Play-Off competing in the Joe McDonagh cup in 2019, and the loser in the Christy Ring Cup in 2019.

Because both provincial hurling championships and the Joe McDonagh Cup are largely populated by teams that look evenly matched on paper, there’s a good chance that after the Round Robin phase two or more teams will finish level on points.

Where only two teams finish on the same amount of points they’ll be separated by the outcome of their meeting.

If that match ended in a draw or if three or more teams finish level on points, then they’ll be separated by the following means in this order: (1) Scoring Difference (2) Highest Total Score For (3) Highest Total Goals For (4) A Play-Off.

The knock-out element might no longer exist in the Munster and Leinster hurling championship, but because the stakes are so high and the teams so evenly matched, the round-robin format should in no way dilute the intensity of the contests.

Tipperary manager Michael Ryan certainly doesn’t think so.

“There'll be no dilution whatsoever,” said Ryan. “Those four matches in Munster for us and for every team that we play will be absolutely cracking games. They have to be.

“We play Limerick, Cork, Waterford, and Clare in that order. You couldn't make it tougher, and it's the very same for the other teams too. Every single game is tough.

“We are a very evenly matched province. It would be a very wise man who could pick who will be the winners and losers out of the four rounds of matches in Munster.

“The big thing that's out there is that two of the teams will be finished hurling in June. That's a scary proposition for any Munster team where you have five good teams. There is zero room for error.”

The obvious challenge for every team competing in the provincial hurling championships and the Joe McDonagh Cup is that the matches will come so thick and fast.

The four round-robin rounds in both provinces will be played over the course of five consecutive weekends, while the six rounds of the McDonagh Cup will be played over the course of six consecutive weekends.

According to Ryan, team managers will have little option but to play their strongest hand from the start and hope the depth of talent in their panel proves sufficient thereafter.

“From our perspective it'll be a case of every match is a must win match,” he said. “I think we'll have a very simple strategy. Day one is huge, but it's only matched by days two, three, and four which are just as huge.

“There's no reprieve here. It'll be a case of us putting out our strongest team every single day we can, but that will not necessarily be the same team.

“I think we will get caught with injuries, because if any player even tweaks a hamstring he'll be out for the next day, and that'll just be that. And we've got to have fellas who can just step in.

“At the end of the League we believe we have expanded that pool. Or maybe we just opened up our minds to say that you can take any player from the panel who is fit to go in and that's it, they just go in.

“Whereas before you might worry about a player not having enough big-match experience and think he's not ready for it yet. That's out the window now. This will be a case of who's available and what's the strongest combination we can put out.”

It looks like this year’s All-Ireland Hurling Championship will test the mettle of the competing teams more than any heretofore in the history of the game.

Expect them to rise to the challenge and give hurling fans a summer to savour.