Perhaps even more than winning leagues or losing cup finals, relegation and promotion represent the greatest highs and lows of the club season. Nowhere is this more evident than in the annual battle to avoid relegation from Division 1 and secure promotion from Division 2. At the risk of intruding on personal grief [only in sporting terms of course] or disrupting the celebrations two points are worth making.
Firstly, for nearly 25 years [since 1993] promotion and relegation have been part of the normal cycle for what were once called Senior Cricket Clubs. In that time only one club [North County] has never suffered the fate of relegation and all the other clubs two or more times. Every club has seen promotion, seven clubs four times or more. The table below provides a breakdown of the history of up and downs between D1 / D2 with the following highlights:
Most years in D1 Clontarf [21]
Fewest years in D1 Rush [6]*
Longest Continuous Period in D1 North County [16]
Bounce back [back up following year] Clontarf & Pembroke [3]
Drop the year after promotion Terenure & Malahide [3]
The second point to make is that whether promotion or relegation everything depends on how the club and team respond. If promotion what can the club do to ensure that the 1st XI makes a successful transition to the top division and retains its place for the following year. This can be a real challenge and one that by my count clubs have failed to meet on no less than 15 occasions. For the relegated clubs the message is surely something along the lines of ‘never waste a crisis’. A year [or more] in D2 may provide the opportunity to bring on young players and overhaul internal structures so that the team is better prepared for when it next competes in the top flight. In the meantime there is still the Irish Senior Cup [at least for a year], the Leinster Senior Cup and the Alan Murray T20 competitions to go with the D2 league.
| Years in D1 | Continous | Current Run | Promotion | Relegation | Bounced Back | |
| YMCA | 18 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 2 | |
| Pembroke | 16 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| Malahide | 12 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| Clontarf | 21 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Terenure | 8 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| Phoenix | 13 | 8 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| Leinster | 10 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Railway | 14 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| Rush | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 2 | |
| Merrion | 15 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| The Hills | 15 | 9 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| North County | 16 | 16 | 16 | 1 | 0 | |
| Munster / Cork | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Longest = longest period out of D1 following relegation. | ||||||
| Continuous in up to 2016 |
* From the clubs that have played in D1. Carlisle dropped out of all competitions after the 1999 season and Cork/Munster only competed in Leinster in certain years