Clare Delegates Point Finger At Limerick After Contentious Munster Draw U-Turn

Clare have voiced their objection after a massively divisive change to the format of the Munster football championship was confirmed for 2025.

The Munster council announced late after Thursday's meeting that a change to their seeding system had been voted through.

A post on social media from the Munster council explained the post, saying:

At tonight's Munster Council meeting, a proposal that the highest 2 ranking teams from the Allianz Football League are placed on opposite sides of the Semi Final Draw for the following year's Munster Senior Football Championship draw was ratified for a 3 year period beginning in 2026.

For the 2026 Munster Senior Football Championship, Kerry and Cork as the two highest ranking teams in the 2025 Allianz Football League will be placed on opposite sides of the Semi-Final draw.

The shift to seeding the championship has been met with much criticism, and Clare chairman Kieran Keating has been among those to speak out.

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Speaking on Clare FM on Friday morning, the county's GAA chairman Kieran Keating slated the "indefensible" decision to change the format of the Munster championship for 2026.

"It’s disappointing that it's been introduced now in this sort of short order based on positions in a league that's already finished before the decision has arrived at," Keating said.

That's rather unjust and indefensible, really. You know that there's certainly an injustice in that as we would see it anyway and I think as any right-minded person would see it.

Clare have reached the last three Munster finals, all of which ended in defeat to Kerry.

Bernard Keane, Clare's Munster council delegate, revealed that Limerick voted in favour of the proposal alongside Cork and Kerry, writes John Fogarty in the Irish Examiner.

It's understood that the Limerick representatives voted in favour of the change despite players and management indicating they wanted to vote against it, something Keane mentioned in his interview with Clare FM.

Our understanding was that the management of the Limerick senior football team and the players were against the motion yet their delegate last night voted in favour of it.

That's probably their business at this stage to figure that one out but at the end of the day we were defeated because we didn't have the Limerick support.

Clare, Tipperary, and Waterford voted against the proposed change.

The biggest concern expressed by Keane, Keating, and by Gaelic football fans at large is that this shift will only widen the gap between football's perceived elite and developing counties.

"We’d argue that Cork's record against Kerry is comparable to ours over the last decade or so," Keating said in his Clare FM interview.

"We're obviously disappointed now that when Cork are in a slightly better position than us that they've started taking advantage."

The reaction from GAA fans online was mixed at best, with some suggesting the change had been made to increase the chances of a Cork v Kerry provincial final.

"Strange how this system wasn't proposed previously when Clare were competing in Division 2 and Cork in Division 3," wrote the aptly named @CynicalClareman, while other fans called the decision "shameful" and a "disgrace."

It remains to be seen if any of the counties that voted against the change will make any move to appeal, with Keating confirming Clare are exploring the possibility of bringing the issue to the GAA's Central Council.