All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship
The GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship, known simply as the All-Ireland Championship, is an annual inter-county hurling competition organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association. It is the highest-tier competition for inter-county hurling in Ireland and has been contested in every year except one since 1887.
The final, formerly held in September, then August and now moved to July, is the culmination of a series of games played during the summer and with the winning team receiving the Liam MacCarthy Cup. The All-Ireland Championship has been played on a straight knockout basis for the majority of its existence, whereby a team's first loss eliminated them from the championship. In more recent years, the qualification procedures for the championship have changed several times. Currently, qualification is limited to teams competing in 3 feeder competitions; three teams from the Leinster Senior Hurling Championship, three teams from the Munster Senior Hurling Championship and two teams who qualify to the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals from the second-tier Joe McDonagh Cup. Annual promotion and relegation allows teams outside these competitions to eventually reach the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship.
Seventeen teams currently participate in the All-Ireland Championship, with the most successful coming from the provinces of Leinster and Munster. 13 different teams have won the title, 10 of whom have been champions more than once. Kilkenny are the competition's most successful team, having been All-Ireland champions on 36 occasions. Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary are considered "the big three" of hurling and hold 95 championships between them, while Limerick have had huge success in recent years, winning five all Irelands in six years. The current title holders are Tipperary, who defeated Cork by 3-27 to 1-18 in the 2025 final. This was Tipperary's 29th All Ireland hurling title.
The All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final was listed in second place by CNN in its "10 sporting events you have to see live", after the Olympic Games.
History
Creation
Following the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884, new rules for Gaelic football and hurling were drawn up and published in the United Irishman newspaper. In 1886, county committees began to be established, with several counties affiliating over the next few years. The GAA ran its inaugural All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship in 1887. The decision to establish that first championship was influenced by several factors. Firstly, inter-club contests in 1885 and 1886 were wildly popular and began to draw huge crowds. Clubs started to travel across the country to play against each other and these matches generated intense interest as the newspapers began to speculate which teams might be considered the best in the country. Secondly, although the number of clubs was growing, many were slow to affiliate to the Association, leaving it short of money. Establishing a central championship held the prospect of enticing GAA clubs to process their affiliations, just as the establishment of the FA Cup had done much in the 1870s to promote the development of the Football Association in England. The championships were open to all affiliated clubs who would first compete in county-based competitions, to be run by local county committees. The winners of each county championship would then proceed to represent that county in the All-Ireland series.Beginnings
The inaugural All-Ireland Championship used, for the only time in its history, an open draw format without the provincial series of games. All of the existing county boards were eligible to enter a team, however, only six chose to do so. Disputes in Cork and Limerick over which club should represent the county resulted in neither county fielding a team. Dublin later withdrew from the championship. In all five teams participated: Clare, Galway, Kilkenny Tipperary and Wexford.Galway and Wexford contested the very first championship match on Saturday 2 July 1887. Postponements, disqualifications, objections, withdrawals and walkovers were regular occurrences during the initial years of the championship. The inaugural All-Ireland final took place on 1 April 1888 in Birr, County Offaly, with Tipperary defeating Galway to take the title.
Development
The provincial championships were introduced in 1888 in Munster, Leinster, Connacht and Ulster on a knock-out basis. The winners of the provincial finals participated in the All-Ireland semi-finals. Over time the Leinster and Munster teams grew to become the superpowers of the game, as Gaelic football was the more dominant sport in Ulster and Connacht. After some time Galway became the only credible team in Connacht and was essentially given an automatic pass to the All-Ireland semi-final every year. This knock-out system persisted for over 100 years and was considered to be the fairest system as the All-Ireland champions would always be the only undefeated team of the year.Unlike in other European countries, such as neighbouring England, where annual sports events were cancelled during the twentieth century due to the First and Second World Wars, the All-Ireland Championship has been running continuously since 1887, with the final running since 1889. The competition continued even in spite of the effects on the country of the Civil War and the Second World War. In 1941, the All-Ireland Championship was disrupted by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
The duration of certain championship matches increased from 60 to 80 minutes during the 1970s. They were settled at 70 minutes after five seasons of this in 1975. This applied only to the provincial finals, All-Ireland semi-finals and finals.
In the mid-1990s the Gaelic Athletic Association looked at developing a new system whereby a defeat in the championship for certain teams would not mean an immediate exit from the Championship. In the 1997 championship the first major change in format arrived when the 'back-door system' was introduced. This new structure allowed the defeated Munster and Leinster finalists another chance to regain a place in the All-Ireland semi-finals. Tipperary and Kilkenny were the first two teams to benefit from the new system when they defeated Down and Galway respectively in the quarter-finals. The All-Ireland final in the first year of this new experiment was a replay of the Munster final with Clare defeating Tipperary. The first team to win the All-Ireland through the 'back-door' was Offaly in 1998, winning a replay of the Leinster final by beating Kilkenny 2–16 to 1–13.
File:Croke Park - Dublin vs Tyrone 125.jpg|thumb|Fireworks and light displays in Croke Park in Dublin to mark the 125th anniversary of the Gaelic Athletic Association, January 2009
The new "back-door system" proved successful and was expanded over the following years. The 2005 Championship saw even bigger changes in the "back-door" or qualifier system. The Munster and Leinster champions and defeated finalists automatically qualified for the new quarter-final stages, while two groups of four other teams played in a league format to fill the vacant four places in the quarter-finals. Many criticised the structure for not being a real championship at all, for degrading the Munster and Leinster championships and for penalising the strongest teams.
2008 brought a change to the competition format, whereby the team that won the Leinster and Munster championships advanced to the All-Ireland semi-finals, and the losers of the provincial finals advanced to two quarter-finals. A series of knockout qualifiers for the remaining teams decided which other two teams would reach the quarter-finals. The updated qualifier structure provided more games and gave renewed hope to the "weaker" teams, as a defeat in the first round no longer meant the end of a county's All-Ireland ambitions.
Format
Current format
Leinster Championship (six teams)
Group stage : Each team plays each other once. The 1st and 2nd placed teams advance to the Leinster final and the 3rd placed team advances to the all-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals. All other teams are eliminated from the championship and the bottom placed team may face relegation to next years Joe McDonagh Cup.Final : The top 2 teams in the group stage contest this game. The Leinster champions advance to the All-Ireland semi-finals and the Leinster runners-up advance to the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
Munster Championship (five teams)
Group stage : Each team plays each other once. The 1st and 2nd placed teams advance to the Munster final and the 3rd placed team advances to the all-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals. All other teams are eliminated from the championship and the bottom placed team may face relegation to next years Joe McDonagh Cup.Final : The top 2 teams in the group stage contest this game. The Munster champions advance to the All-Ireland semi-finals and the Munster runners-up advance to the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
Joe McDonagh Cup (six teams)
Group stage : Each team plays each other once. The 1st and 2nd placed teams advance to the Joe McDonagh Cup final. All other teams are eliminated from the championship and the bottom placed team are relegated to next years Christy Ring Cup. If the top team is from Munster, effectively Kerry, they may play a promotion/relegation playoff to enter the following season's Munster Championship. If any other team wins the Joe McDonagh, it is promoted to the Leinster Championship, and the last placed team in the Leinster Championship is relegated.Final : The top 2 teams in the group stage contest this game. The Joe McDonagh Cup champions and runners-up advance to the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals.
All-Ireland Championship
Preliminary quarter-finals : The 3rd placed teams from the Leinster and Munster championships play the Joe McDonagh Cup champions and runners-up. Two teams are eliminated at this stage while the winners advance to the quarter-finals.Quarter-finals : The winners of the preliminary quarter-finals join the Leinster and Munster runners-up to make up the quarter-final pairings. Teams who may have already met in the provincial championships are kept apart in separate quarter-finals. Two teams are eliminated at this stage while the winners advance to the semi-finals.
Semi-finals : The winners of the quarter-finals join the Leinster and Munster champions to make up the semi-final pairings. Teams who may have already met in the provincial championships are kept apart in separate semi-finals where possible. Two teams are eliminated at this stage while the winners advance to the final.
Final : The two winners of the semi-finals contest this game.