Republican News · Thursday 11 July 2002

Restructuring the Football Championship

By CIARAN MacANNRAOI

Admittedly, the new system does give teams another chance, but what does a county like Leitrim learn from an 18-point drubbing by one of the game’s heavyweights like Tyrone?

Reform has been a big thing in the GAA over the last few years. We have everything from redeveloped stadia to the branding of teams and new structures for both the football and hurling championships.

We mightn’t always accept change with open arms, but often it is necessary to make progress. Like any organisation, the GAA needed to make changes in order to modernise itself, but due to resistance, the wrong changes were made to the championship structures.

You may well be familiar with the current system in the football championship, whereby every team that loses a game up to the provincial final is given another championship game based on an open draw. The plan was thought to be a balance between the tradition of the provincial championship and the All Ireland championship - effectively both remained knockout competitions but the criteria to qualify for the latter was afforded to everyone and not just the provincial winner.

Most of the time, I am willing to give something new a try, so I have watched the new system develop over the last 14 months. I would have no hesitation in saying it was successful and beneficial to the organisation as a whole last year - attendance for the football championship broke 1 million, a feat never even dreamt of before, and we had big games every weekend and lots of TV exposure.

In contrast to that, however, this year attendances are way down. Compare double headers in Croke Park, with 30-40,000 present for Qualifying series matches and your Mayo Roscommon game last week with only 7,000 patrons, normally this game, if in the Connacht championship, would attract 30,000 people to the same venue. A further example of this, Casement Park in Belfast last Saturday when Derry played Tyrone in front of at most 8,000 people, the prize for the winner was a game against a losing provincial finalist and only one match from the All Ireland Quarter Final.

Leaving aside the PR and finance aspects for a while, ask yourself why this system was introduced. One of the primary reasons was to give everyone a second chance; it recognised that teams who had trained for months should not be sidelined after only 70 minutes of summer football.

Admittedly, the new system does give teams another chance, but what does a county like Leitrim learn from an 18-point drubbing by one of the game’s heavyweights like Tyrone? The same goes for Wicklow, who Kerry disposed of with a 23-point surplus. If anything, to sustain a beating like this for the sake of an extra 70 minutes is demoralising. I couldn’t see how this would develop or benefit the vanquished team.

The GAA President Seán McCague has stated that "every unit of the association should have a realistic chance of All Ireland success every 20 years", but the current system hasn’t benefited the lot of the weaker county - it has done the opposite and helped the stronger ones. Seven out of eight of last year’s quarter finalists have been in or around the top echelons of Gaelic football in the last few years, and five of them would be classed among the superpowers. Westmeath would be the only newcomers and I would hasten to say the only so-called weak county to benefit.

The chances of a weaker county making an All Ireland under the new system would be about the same as a non-Premiership team making the English FA Cup final; there will be one or two surprises, teams that will go reasonably far, but that’s about it

On the day, a small team can muster a surprise and beat a bigger team, but to do it twice borders on the impossible. For example, Roscommon, through passion and tenacity, beat Galway in the Connacht Semi Final last year and a team who would traditionally have been out went on to annihilate them three games further on and eventually lift the Sam Maguire.

My proposal for reform is somewhat loosely based on a plan presented to Congress three or four years ago by the Football Development Committee. They proposed scrapping the National League - there would be three divisions, the top teams qualifying for a provincial knockout (the third division was, I believe, an amalgamation of Connacht and Ulster).

Every team would get a minimum of ten games, and no doubt the consistency of regular spring/summer football against teams of varying standards would develop weaker teams and revitalise the league. Under the current system, all the weak teams wallow in Division 3 or 4 of the league and might play two championship games only to meet a fate like that of Wicklow/Leitrim. Unfortunately, the plan met its demise because too many key players felt they would lose out, however these same bodies I believe are suffering more under the current system.

I attend National League matches regularly, and by doing so as a GAA fan I would be an exception rather than the rule. Ten years ago a league final attracted 60,000 to Croke Park, but today it would barely muster 25,000. The competition has been in freefall for those ten years and one could attribute this to many factors, including the managers/teams belittling the competition in interviews and through the teams they field, as well as it having little or no impact on the big competition.

The league is dying a slow death and I believe it should be taken out of its misery sooner rather than later and not be let linger, like the Railway Cup.

My proposal is based on four provincial leagues, with the participants as they stand in the current provincial championship. In Leinster and Ulster they would play home or away every second year and in Connacht/Ulster they would play home and away every year. This would lead to ten matches per team with the exception of the Ulster counties, who would play eight games, although a round robin to make it up to ten games could be organised.

At the end of the provincial league, the top teams would qualify for the Provincial Championship; this, I believe would retain some semblance of the traditional format.

The next problem to be surmounted is the age old one of the team that plays consistently and tops a league should not be put on an equal footing with the fourth placed team, as to do so would be unjust. This is a fundamental flaw in the All Ireland (rugby) league whereby the finals series is merely 1 v 4 and 2 v 3 in straight semi finals, no second change or weighted advantage for team 1 over team 4. I firmly believe that by finishing first you should earn a weighted advantage in any subsequent knock out system and to surmount the problem, I would implement a system devised in Australia, whereby five teams qualify for the Finals Series. Team 1 has an advantage in that they can lose once and get up to two weeks off; team 4 and 5 cannot lose and get no week off; teams 2 and 3 can lose once, could get a maximum of one week off but are more likely not to get a week off.

At this point I would refer you to the diagram as it is far easier to comprehend and visualise the merits of this system with its assistance. In the smaller provinces, you will see a difference enforced by the number of teams in the league. Four teams would qualify and it would start at round 2 of the system for the big provinces, with 1 v 2 and 3 v 4 playing and it would continue exactly as the top 5 system, with only 1 and 2 having a second chance if they lose.

Now that we can decide our provincial championship, it is only a matter of deciding the All-Ireland series. You could go back to the traditional system of provincial winners only or you could continue with the current system of All-Ireland quarter finals. It would only be a minute matter of deciding whether the losing provincial finalist or the second tem in the in the league qualifies.

The system above is as close as I believe one can come to satisfying all the arguments out there. I have mulled over this for years, studying the systems of sports across the planet. In the end, it was only a matter of tweaking a plan which was before GAA already. The tweaking leaves us with a more traditional structure. It would be of far more benefit to the weaker teams, and the provincial councils still have their showpiece final, which doesn’t discriminate against the consistent performer.

Alas, for all its good selling points, plans like this often fail because someone with a vested interest will lose out by evolution. In short, the powers in this case happen to be the various county boards, the provincial councils and central council. As the system stands now, the county boards are the main benefactors from National League games, the provincial councils reap the profits from provincial championships and central council benefits from the final stages of the All-Ireland matches (including the qualifiers).

I am not going to go into a detailed financial report/projections. The purpose of this article is to outline and sell the proposed system but I imagine broad agreement could be reached on the basis that the three prongs of the new system (League, Provincial Championship and All-Ireland series) could directly replace the existing income sources that the constituent organisations receive.

Change is a necessary evil. The GAA started a process of evolution ten years ago; they are now only beginning to tamper with the national competitions and I believe that the above model would be the icing on the cake of current developments.

Of course the fun will really start when congress debates such plans!