All Ireland Hurling Roll of Honour

The All-Ireland hurling championships have been running since 1887 when Tipperary became the first winners of the All-Ireland Hurling title beating Galway by 1-1 to no score. As you can gather from that scoreline, high scoring was not a regular occurence in the early days of the GAA, neither in hurling nor gaelic football.

Since the inception of the All-Ireland Hurling championships there have been three counties that have dominated and, therefore, have many more All-Ireland Hurling titles to their name than the rest of Ireland - these three counties are commonly referred to as the 3 traditional hurling counties and they are Cork, Kilkenny, and Tipperary.

In the early days from 1887 to 1900, Cork and Tipperary dominated to a large extent winning several titles between them with other counties like Dublin and Limerick getting in on the action with one or two titles of their own. Although Kilkenny are a dominant force in hurling these days it wasn't until 1904 that they won their very first All-Ireland Hurling title, by which time Cork and Tipperary had already amassed 6 titles each - but obviously the Kilkenny Cats have caught up since then.

The current All-Ireland Hurling Roll of Honour (as of season end 2005) shows Cork on top with 30 All-Irelands, Kilkenny in second on 28 All-Irelands, and Tipperary in third on 25 All-Ireland Hurling titles. The next best is Limerick with 7 hurling titles - indicating just how much these 3 "Traditional" hurling counties have dominated hurling since the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) began.

To give a further indication of how these 3 counties still dominate hurling to this very day you just have to look at the winners of the last 7 All-Ireland Hurling titles - Cork (3), Kilkenny (3), Tipperary (1) - the last non-traditional county to win the All-Ireland Hurling title was Offaly in 1998. However, that's not to say that hurling is not strong enough in other counties - it's just that the traditional counties will always have a good team and will be difficult to beat - but far from impossible - in fact, Clare were very unlucky this year (2005) to lose to Cork in the semi final, losing by just one point having missed several chances that could have sealed victory for them - and Cork then went on to win the final beating Galway.

There have been many individual stars over the years also who have amassed several All-Ireland titles. Players like former Kilkenny goalkeeper Noel Skehan has 9 All-Ireland winners medals to his name which I think is still the individual record to this day. Probably the most famous player of all time was Christy Ring of Cork, who was part of the great 4-in-a-row Cork team of the 1940's. Then there's DJ Carey of Kilkenny who is widely regarded as the greatest modern day hurler and is still playing today (he's been in 9 All-Ireland Finals and won 5 of them).

To find out more about which counties have won what in terms of All-Ireland Hurling success and more besides go to the Cuchulainns GAA website.