A Fermanagh hurler has labelled proposals to potentially exclude a number of counties from the Allianz League from 2025 onwards as "a farce".
A recommendation from the GAA's Central Competitions Control Committee, if approved, would see any county with fewer than five adult hurling teams competing solely in the fifth-tier Lory Meagher Cup – meaning the Erne County, Cavan, Leitrim, Longford and Louth would be impacted.
With no league action, their county seasons would be reduced from six months to three with the saved spending, along with additional funding, instead aimed at improving hurling development in those counties.
Fermanagh captain Ryan Bogue, one of the longest serving inter-county hurlers having made his debut off the bench against Cavan in 2006, said he was gobsmacked when he was presented with the document explaining the possible changes.
"The whole thing seems to be made up and pulled out of the sky with no consideration put into it at all," he told RTÉ Sport.
"I wouldn't say I would be overly surprised. Over the last six, seven years, the treatment of hurling in counties like our own has definitely improved but previous to that you were always obviously second best in terms of privileges.
"I thought we had got past that but this is just back to that. Our county board is great, anything we want, we get, but this is coming from the top.
"The fact that the players who are playing the game have absolutely no control seems crazy to me.
"It worries me about how the ladies and camogie teams will be treated when the integration process is completed if this is how hurlers will be treated."
Players from the quintet have been in touch with the Gaelic Players Association seeking advice on how they can fight the proposal, and Bogue said that the 'rule of five’ was too simple of a formula.
"When you take the amount of clubs in Fermanagh and take the ratio of hurling clubs to football clubs and then you go to Tyrone and do the same, Fermanagh is in a better place.
"Five counties, 25 players on each panel, so that’s 125 hurlers that will be without four or five games a year.
"I have a 10-year-old nephew [Callum] and he never misses a league game for us. What does that say to him?
"That young lad goes to watch those games but if we’re kicked out he’ll just go and watch five or six football games instead. That means he will become a footballer rather than a hurler.
Green shoots emerging in barren Fermanagh hurling landscape
"He’ll go watch Ultan Kelm and Darragh McGurn and will want to be them, he’s not going to want to be a Luca McCusker because he won’t see him. That’s how you kill off hurling in a county."
With the vote scheduled for December, Bogue is hoping that they can garner vocal support from the superpowers of the game to sway opinion.
"Nobody wants to give up their league games, it’s plain to be seen, but the only thing we can hope for is that the other big counties get behind us.
"The problem is that the people voting, a lot of them will not care about Fermanagh hurling, will not care about Cavan hurling. If there’s a game won they’ll never even know the result of it. You’re going to have some football-crazy lad hitting a button and he won’t even know what he is voting for.
"Hopefully the likes of Limerick, Tipperary and Cork will say ‘Jesus, those lads deserve to be hurling as much as anyone."
Louth captain Peter Fortune was equally scathing of the proposals.
"The fact that 'hurling development' is quoted in the same lines as this proposal is flabbergasting," he told RTÉ Radio 1’s Saturday Sport.
"We are constantly fighting a battle to promote hurling in our areas and help it develop. If you cut the head off the body dies and that’s what’s going to happen to hurling in these areas.
"We view this as a complete cost-cutting exercise dressed up as something else.
"People are going to be voting on this decision in the coming weeks and there is no concrete plan as to how this money saved [on league participation] will be spent. And if there is it hasn’t been given to any of the hurling people in these counties.
"We are demanding action from our county boards, we want them to come out with their stance as soon as possible.
"It’s very hard to prepare for something for a whole year, setting targets of maybe getting out of your division or winning a Lory Meagher or Nickey Rackard and trying to progress up the tree of hurling, when in 2025, all that could be taken away from you for no good reason."
Fortune also said the players had been angered by finding out about the proposal through the media.
"The real hurt and frustration that all the players have comes from the fact that we heard about it the same time that you guys did. There was absolutely no consultation with players… all five of the panels of players, who give so much of their year to hurling and developing hurling in their counties.
"There is very little information coming our way and we see that as a massive sign of disrespect to the hurlers of Louth, Leitrim, Longford Cavan and Fermanagh.
"I would urge the hurling people of Ireland, the sports people of Ireland, to fight against this. This is us being told that the lower tiers of hurling mean nothing to the GAA, that’s how we feel as players."
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