A total of 33 teams contested the championship – 31 teams from Ireland plus London and New York. As in previous years, Kilkenny footballers did not field a team. New York does not participate in the qualifiers.
Format
Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster organise four provincial championships on a knock-out basis. All the teams beaten in the provincial matches (except New York) enter the All-Ireland Qualifiers in rounds 1, 2 and 4. The qualifier matches are knock-out and eventually result in four teams who play in the All-Ireland Quarter-Finals against the four provincial winners. From the quarter-finals onwards the competition is entirely knock-out.
A O’Shea (3–4), C O’Connor (1–7), D O'Connor (0–4), L Keegan, S O’Shea (1–0 each), J Doherty (0–3), M Ronaldson, D Vaughan (0–2 each); P Durcan, B Moran and A Dillon (0–1 each).
An A and B system for the qualifying draws was introduced in 2014 and continued in 2015. The teams were designated as A or B depending on which half of their provincial championships they were initially drawn to play in. Typically the provincial draws were not seeded, resulting in random A and B team designations.
In all qualifier rounds A teams played A teams and B teams played B teams. Usually the A teams completed their provincial games before the B teams, which allowed the A qualifier games to be scheduled a week before the B qualifier games.
Round 1
The first round consisted of all teams that failed to reach their provincial semi-finals, with the exception of New York. 16 teams in total took part.
In round 1 four A teams played four A teams and four B teams played four B teams. The eight round 1 winners played the eight beaten provincial semi-finalists in round 2 of the qualifiers.
In the second round of the qualifiers the eight winning teams from Round 1A and Round 1B played the eight beaten provincial semi-finalists. The round 2 draw was unrestricted − if two teams had played each other in a provincial match they could be drawn to meet again. The eight winners of these matches played each other in Round 3.
K O’Halloran 0–7 (4f, 2 45s), C Sweeney 1–2 (1–0 pen, 0-1f), C O’Riordan 1–1, G Mulhair 1–0, P Acheson, M Quinlivan, P Austin 0–2 each, S Kennedy, L Casey, J Lonergan, B Fox, B Grogan (f) 0–1 each.
In the third round of the qualifiers winning teams from round 2A played against winning teams from round 2A and winning teams from round 2B played against winning teams from round 2B. Round 3 rules did not allow two teams that had played each other in a provincial match to meet again. The four winners of these matches played the four beaten provincial finalists in Round 4.
M Donnellan 0–2(45s), O Lyons 0–1, E Bolton 0–1, P Cribbin 0–4, P O’Neill 0–2, E O’Flaherty 0–5(4fs), C McNally 0–1, N Kelly 0–2, A Smith 1–1, E Callaghan 1–1, M Sherry 0–1, M Conway 0–3(fs)
In the fourth round of the qualifiers, the four winning teams of Round 3A and Round 3B played the four provincial beaten finalists.[3] Round 4 rules did not allow two teams that had played each other in a provincial match to meet again if such a pairing could be avoided. The four winners of these matches played the provincial winners in the All-Ireland Quarter-Finals.
D McCurry 0–8 (4f, 1 '45'), S Cavanagh 0–3, M Donnelly 0–3, M Bradley 0–2, C McAliskey 0–1, R Brennan 0–1, N Morgan 0–1 (1f), C Cavanagh 0–1, P Harte 0–1
The four provincial champions played the winners from Round 4 of the qualifiers. If one of the provincial champions had already met one of the qualifiers in an earlier match then those two teams could not be drawn together.
There was no draw for the semi-finals[4] as the fixtures were pre-determined on a three yearly rotation. This rotation ensured that a province's champions played the champions of all the other provinces once every three years in the semi-finals if they each won their quarter-finals. If a qualifier team defeated a provincial winner in a quarter-final, the qualifier team took that provincial winner's place in the semi-final.
James O'Donoghue 0–4 (0-3f, 1 '45), Johnny Buckley and Paul Geaney (0-1f) 0–3 each, Stephen O'Brien and Colm Cooper (0-1f) 0–2 each, Anthony Maher, Donnchadh Walsh, Kieran Donaghy, Barry John Keane 0–1 each
Diarmuid Connolly 1–2 (1–0 pen, 0-1f), Kevin McManamon 1–1, Ciaran Kilkenny 0–3, Paddy Andrews and Bernard Brogan 0–2 each, Jack McCaffrey and Alan Brogan 0–1 each
Philly McMahon 1–2, Paddy Andrews 0–5, Bernard Brogan and Kevin McManamon 1–1 each, Ciaran Kilkenny and Dean Rock (0-2f) 0–2 each, James McCarthy and Brian Fenton 0–1 each
Cillian O'Connor 1–6 (0-5f), Diarmuid O'Connor 0–2, Lee Keegan, Barry Moran, Aidan O’Shea, Kevin McLoughlin, Patrick Durcan, Andy Moran (0-1f) 0–1 each
First red card of the championship: Neil Gallagher for Donegal against Tyrone (17 May 2015)
Miscellaneous
Tipperary and Waterford meet in the Munster championship for the first time since 2003.
Westmeath recorded their first ever championship win over Meath in the Leinster semi-final.
Tyrone met Limerick and Tipperary for the first time in championship history, with Tyrone coming out on top of both games.
Under the old system, an All-Ireland semi-final would have featured Kerry vs Monaghan.
Broadcasting rights
RTÉ, the national broadcaster in Ireland provided live television coverage of the championship. In the second year of a deal running from 2014 until 2016, a number of matches were also broadcast by Sky Sports, with Sky having exclusive rights to some games.[8][9]
Australia's terrestrial Seven Network announced it would not broadcast Gaelic games following its coverage of the 2014 Championship.[10]
As in the 2014 season, the GAA and RTÉ provided a streaming service called GAAGO intended to stream championship games worldwide.[11] The subscription-based service was available to fans everywhere in the world outside of the island of Ireland, including all the games broadcast in Ireland exclusively by Sky Sports.[12] All televised games from the football and hurling championships, as broadcast by both RTÉ and Sky were available to watch on GAAGO.[13]
Live television rights
The following matches were broadcast live on television in Ireland.
The Sunday Game team of the year was picked on 20 September, the night of the final. Dublin's Jack McCaffrey was named as The Sunday Game player of the year.[14]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Cillian O'Connor (3–34)
Jack McCaffrey 
