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Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Football championship needs to be reviewed
Intercounty GAA activity is now entering the closed season. Indeed there will be a ban on all intercounty activity, including collective training, for November and December.
This presents a problem for team managers who will have little opportunity to bring their panels together before the provincial leagues in January. That aside, this is an appropriate time to look back and assess the hurling and football championships.
The big issue in both codes is the structure of the championships. In hurling this will be addressed at next weekend’s Special GAA Congress.
In football there is no review pending. Most GAA members would agree that one is needed. The qualifier system was a typical GAA solution to a GAA problem. The core issue was and still is the huge numbers imbalance that exists in the provincial structure, a situation that makes it practically impossible to organise balanced, co-ordinated intercounty championships. On top of that the provincial competitions are organised by four autonomous councils.
The qualifier system never addressed these issues. Instead it was designed to resolve the fact that half the participating counties were eliminated after the first round. Following at least six months of preparation their season was over. It was also anticipated that a second opportunity would help the weaker counties.
In hindsight the opposite has happened. While the system does give some help to the weaker counties, the main beneficiaries are the stronger counties. Out went the day of the big shock that saw one of the top teams eliminated by one blow from a minnow. Instead the system ensured that the strong became stronger this year’s All-Ireland football final was contested by two teams that had come through the back door. Under the old system both would have been eliminated.
The structure has also caused long gaps between provincial and qualifier games. Roscommon had a gap of nine weeks between elimination from the Connacht championship and the qualifier game against Donegal. On the other hand, some counties find themselves playing successively for three or four weekends.
Tyrone manager Mickey Harte raised the issue of the provincial champions being denied a second chance recently. They win the title but if they are beaten in the next game, an All-Ireland quarter-final, there are gone. Indeed Cork were the only provincial champions to reach the All-Ireland semifinals this year. There are 11 counties in Leinster, nine in Ulster, six in Munster and in Connacht five or seven if you count New York and London. With those kinds of numbers it is clearly not possible to organise a competitions structure that is balanced, well co-ordinated and accommodates club activity.
Add in the number of grades and levels and it gives fixtures planners a headache of migraine proportions, not to mention the problems it presents for officials, managers and, most important of all, players.
The standard reply to these problems is that the Association is a victim of its own success. Rubbish, because the truth is that it is a victim of its inability or unwillingness to make radical changes.
So clearly a review of intercounty football championship structures is sorely needed. Unfortunately the Association appears to be reactive rather than proactive in such situations. As for hurling it is quite possible that the new structure being put before next Saturday’s Special Congress will not be passed.
Even if it is, it is far from the ideal solution. Unfortunately, vested interests in the provinces will ensure that the ideal solution remains beyond reach.
As for the football championship, the obvious solution is to reconstitute the Football Development Committee and give them the task of reviewing the whole system and presenting new proposals. There are several possible new structures but one thing is beyond doubt the existing system is in serious need of review.
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