Seeding Munster SFC based on league status would be a 'regressive' move, says Clare chairman Keating

Irish Examiner

19-06-2025

Clare GAA chairman Kieran Keating has criticised the proposal to seed the Munster SFC based on league status, labelling the move as 'retrograde' and 'regressive'.
It emerged last week that at the May meeting of Munster Council top-brass, there was agreement that a recommendation to change how the Munster SFC is seeded would be voted on by the full provincial body in July.
The current structure, which has been in place since 2015, seeds the previous year's Munster finalists. Clare and Kerry, as a result of reaching the 2024 Munster decider, were given semi-final byes for the 2025 draw, albeit they could still have been paired against one another in that last-four stage.
The proposed change is that the two seeded counties would be the two highest-ranked counties from the league. It is also proposed the seeded counties be kept apart in the semi-final draw and so could not meet until the final, at the earliest.
If the league-based seeding is voted in next month, Cork and Kerry would be the seeded pair for 2026 on account of Cork's fifth-place finish in Division 2 earlier this year, bettering Clare's third-place finish in Division 3.
Although Munster GAA have yet to clarify the motivation behind the proposal, it is understood to be linked to a sharp fall in Munster final attendances across the three most recent Kerry-Clare deciders, as well as the one-sided nature of two of those games.
Clare chief Keating has said putting Cork and Kerry up on a 'pedestal' will do nothing to improve the standard of football in Munster.
As well as drawing attention to the fact that Kerry's 17 and 22-point Munster final hammerings of Cork in 2018 and '21 were greater than the 14 and 11-point margins in the Kerry-Clare deciders of 2023 and '25, he has also questioned if there is need at all for any seeding of a six-team championship when Ulster and its nine participants are thrown into an open draw each year.
'We moved away from seeding the Munster football championship over 30 years ago. In that time, ourselves and Tipperary both won a Munster title each. Obviously, we would like to have won more of them, and we hope we will again. It is a very retrograde and regressive step to go back to the way it was in the 1980s and prior to that,' Keating told the Irish Examiner.
'If Munster Council are interested in promoting football and improving the standard of football in the province, well their aim has to be to improve the standard in Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford.
'Improving the standard in Cork is not going to fix Munster football, it is by helping other counties, giving a leg up to other counties, rather than putting Cork and Kerry on the pedestal up above them and saying to the others, you fight for the scraps.'
Keating is hopeful Limerick, Tipp, and Waterford will join Clare in voting against the proposal, but if the seeding criteria is changed, he stressed it should be at least three years before the proposed new system takes effect. Any earlier than that would be unfair, he added.
'If you were to introduce seeding based on league finishing positions, you would have to give ourselves, Tipperary, Limerick, and Waterford the opportunity to advance our league position before that seeding is introduced. So you certainly can't introduce seeding based on a league that is already over.
'If you wanted to introduce it based on the 2026 league, I would argue that is unfair because the only way we can get ahead of Cork is if Cork are relegated. It is not in our power, or Limerick's power for that matter, to get ahead of Cork next year, all we can do is get promoted. So you can't introduce it next year because of that. That is a fundamental problem we would see.'
Another issue the Banner holds with the Munster Council proposal is the double-weighting it gives to a county's league status.
'Qualification to the Sam Maguire is based on provincial final involvement or finishing in roughly the top 12 or 13 positions in the league. Munster Council is proposing there be a double benefit to your league position; you can qualify for the All-Ireland series by finishing high up in the league and you can give yourself a better chance of getting to the Munster final, which would in turn get you into the All-Ireland series.
'There's an injustice in that, an overweighting of league position. It is making league more important than championship for how you do in championship. That's a fundamental flaw in seeding based on league position when there already is an advantage given to counties based on league position.'