There has surely to be a fairer system

“WE don’t want these two games to define the year,” were the words of Laois minor hurling manager Brendan Phelan after his side suffered a second double-digit loss in succession to bring their Leinster Minor Hurling Championship campaign to an end.

Laois were overpowered by a very strong Wexford team in Round 2 of the Tier 1 group stages and that left them with the slimmest of chances of qualification to the semi-finals before heading into their last round clash against Westmeath on Saturday gone.

While one would always be hopeful from a Laois perspective facing off against Westmeath on a hurling field, this is the same Westmeath side that defeated Dublin in Round 2 so they were always going to be tough opposition.

As it turned out, Westmeath proved to be of a serious quality with some top notch hurlers, most notably centre back and captain Conor Williams, and Laois were out of it by half time.

A very slow start against Wexford ultimately which saw the Yellow Bellies 2-15 to 0-1 ahead after 15 minutes proved to be the catalyst for what ended up being a very big beating.

On Saturday it was Laois who made the initial bright start as they raced into a three point lead after four minutes before Westmeath found their feet and the hope amongst the Laois faithful grew for a period.

Once Westmeath found their feet that hope dissipated quite quickly as the Lake County went on an almighty tear, hitting sixteen of the next seventeen points before half time in a totally dominant display.

Laois had a very large score difference to overturn if they were to qualify for a semi-final, so just winning by a couple of points was never going to be any good to them as such.

As a result, they went goal chasing early on even when they had that three point lead and they did force a couple of good saves from the Westmeath stopper.

If they had gotten one or two of those goals would it have been different? If they had taken the points when the chances were there would the goals have come?

Maybe, maybe not. Those are the impossible questions that are so often asked after matches of this ilk that are unanswerable, but that’s sport.

It has been an incredibly tough slog for both of these sides as Westmeath also came from Tier 2, but had Kilkenny beaten Wexford on Saturday Westmeath would be gearing up for a semi-final this coming weekend.

That would have made it seven games in eight weeks which is a huge strain on younger players, especially when player welfare is at the forefront of sports in the modern world.

On the contrary, the Tier 1 teams Kilkenny, Wexford, Galway and Dublin have played just three games so far, which makes for quite an unbalanced competition especially when they’re already considered to be stronger than the Tier 2 teams that had to fight for the pleasure of being here.

There has surely to be a fairer system that doesn’t involve making life twice as hard for the developing counties who are coming into the toughest games of their year on burnt oil having come through Tier 2 already.