The GAA’s newest national hurling competition – The Celtic Challenge – will get underway this Wednesday, May 4.

It pits around 1,000 16 and 17-year-old hurlers from 38 teams across 31 counties against each other in a National competition with a novel format that involves 110 matches taking place over seven weeks. In total there will be 22 county teams and 16 sides that represent regions from within Tier 1 hurling counties such as South Kilkenny, Waterford City and West Limerick.

After an initial round-robin group phase of matches, teams will be graded on their performance and will then be assigned to one of five Divisions for the Preliminaries and the Play Offs where again they will compete against teams of a similar level of ability. The five Divisional Finals will be played on Saturday, June 18th at Nowlan Park in Kilkenny.

The Celtic Challenge has many positives, but Chairperson of the Hurling Development Committee, Paudie O’Neill, believes the guaranteed schedule of matches tops the list. The greatest gripe of every hurler and footballer at almost all levels is that they train far more than they play, but there will be no such cause for complaint for those involved in the Celtic Challenge.

“They've got a set schedule of games, they're fixed dates, they know they're not going to be knocked out after one game,” says O’Neill. “The principles underpinning it would be that they will get a series of games. There are 38 teams in it and every team will get a minimum of at least six games. If they get to the final they get seven games. It's all about giving them a serious of meaningful games, So that's one concept.

“The other one is the fact that it is progressive. For example, you come out of your group and then you're tiered after your group games. From one to eight, nine to 16, and so on like that. Which means that a team like Sligo for example, if they do well and come out of their group then they have the potential to play against a Kilkenny or a Cork or Limerick.

“One of the things that came across very strongly over the years is that a lot of those counties feel that they are confined to a certain bracket and they end up playing against the same teams all the time. It was very interesting when we had conference calls and had feed-back, we were originally looking at seeding the competition.

“So a team from a Nickey Rackard county wouldn't go in against one of the top tier teams. But the answer they gave us was that if they won their group and came out that they wanted to test themselves against the best. So that was an interesting response.

“It is development too in so far as the 12 stronger counties are prohibited from using players who are on their county minor Championship panel of 24 by the 30th of April. Which means that you're giving the next layer of guys an opportunity.”

“We have a ratio where the amount of training done is completely out of kilter with the number of games you play, so a competition like this should address that. We said to the coaches involved with these teams that we didn't want players pulled together in January and training for four months before the thing started. They pulled them together within the last six weeks and have done a reasonable level of work with them since then, but it's all about going to play the games now, really. That's the key thing.”

Aside from the guaranteed schedule of multiple matches, The Celtic Challenge will also feature a number of novel new initiatives on trial in Gaelic Games for the first time. An innovative scoring system will be in operation for the group stages that will award a bonus point for a team that scores two or more goals, while also awarding a losing bonus point for a defeated team that loses by a margin of five points or less.

An interchange policy will be used instead of permanent substitutes which ensures every player on a squad can be involved in a game and another feature of the competition will be for referees and match officials to meet with the teams prior to the game. There will also be a ‘Best and Fairest Award’ that will see referees after every match choose one player from each team selected on the basis of their skill level as well as the respect they showed to the playing rules, match officials and their fellow players.

“I think it’s a great age to try new things,” says O’Neill. “I have great confidence in 17 year olds. Around that age, 17, 18. They've growth mind-sets and are open to new ideas. They're not closed off as older players can be. So they're open to new ideas.

“The fact that we're going for an interchange system whereby you won't have a situation where there'll be a young lad going home on the bus who hasn't gotten a game. That's very demoralising for young lads. Let them all get an opportunity to contribute.

“The respect initiative is also important. There will be a workshop for the referees and Patrick Doherty and Bernard Smith in Croke Park who look after that side of things have been really good. They've got 30 referees nationally who are the next level down from senior inter-county referees and they're giving those guys these games.

“But they also have the simple idea of the referee going to the dressing-room and talks to the team for a couple of minutes. Both teams, before the game, introduce themselves. I suppose it's something we have to work on in our Association still, the level of respect for referees. And we feel we can introduce some sort of relationship if the referee introduces himself and talks to the players. That should be a positive thing as well.”

It is hard to find any negative with The Celtic Challenge, though with teams from areas of the country where the game is strong pitted against those where the game is still developing, there is always the possibility of some lop-sided results. But the message that Paudie O’Neill received loud and clear from all the competing teams is that they want as many games as possible against teams of a high standard because that’s the only way they feel they will improve themselves, even if there’s a painful defeat or two along the way.

“There will be teething problems, I'm sure,” admits O’Neill. “But from the point of view of coaches there's nothing worse than if the team is beaten and you're gone and you have no opportunity to learn from a performance. If you're getting six games over six weeks then you could do a lot in between then in terms of measuring where they are. And it also informs your next training session then because you're actually seeing them in a game situation. 

“There might be some one-sided games, but the message we’re getting from the teams is that they want to be stress-tested because it is the only way ultimately that they will improve.”