Carbery senior hurlers opt out of 2021 county championship

CARBERY will not enter a senior hurling team in this year’s county championship – but the plan is to get them back on the pitch in 2022.

This is the second season in a row that the Carbery senior hurling team won’t compete, but the divisional board’s chairman, Tom Lyons, remains hopeful they’ll be back in action next season.

‘The plan is, when the pandemic is over, that the Carbery hurlers will be back in the championship,’ Lyons says, as he confirmed that the Carbery footballers – under manager Tim Buckley – will compete in this year’s senior football championship.

‘Whereas the Carbery footballers have been working away on Zoom and Tim Buckley has them going all the time, the hurlers don’t have anything done so we decided, after talking to the management, to let it go for this year.

‘We had no certainty and we still don’t over dates that the teams will be in action. If the hurling is played in the middle of the intermediate championship, we wouldn’t have any of those players.’

Lyons admits that he fears for the future of divisional teams as he feels the new county championship format is making it harder for divisions to get together.

‘The new championship format doesn’t suit divisional teams at all,’ the Carbery chairman says.

‘You have the three rounds of games in the group stage and after that you could be in the knock-out stages or a relegation scrap, whereas before if you were knocked out in the early rounds you were available then to your divisional team.

‘With the new championships, I can see divisions falling away.’