Breaking Ball: Time for the GAA community to grow up and accept tiered football championships

The GAA championships kicked off last weekend and to quote a line from Fr Ted, which we are very fond of doing, “it would bore the arse off you”.

Three one-sided games in the hurling and hammerings or games between also-rans in the football.

We’ll park the hurling for the time being but there’s a possibility that the football championship this year will be among the worst ever until, hopefully, an All Ireland final between Dublin and Kerry.

So often in the past decade the inter county football championship have been saved by classic matches in the All Ireland semi-finals or final.

Dublin, Mayo, Kerry and to a much lesser extent Donegal have accounted for the vast majority of the great Gaelic football battles with gripping games at the latter stages rescuing what had been generally underwhelming seasons prior to that.

Last year it was the opposite. The All Ireland semi-finals and final were a pure bore while the excitement was provided primarily in the provincial championships by the unlikely successes of Tipperary and Cavan.

But that was an exception rather than the norm.

Already we’ve heard Laois manager Mike Quirke bemoan the lack of the All Ireland Qualifiers this year while Waterford manager Shane Ronayne has said that the GAA should have pushed on with the second-tier Tailteann Cup this season.

Of course there is no consensus on what is the best way to improve the All Ireland football championship. Keep the provincials? Play the league in the summer? Have a ‘B’ competition?

The Tailteann Cup was a new ‘B’ championship that was supposed to come in last year but was put on the long finger because of the pandemic. Basically it maintained the existing provincial format but only allowed Division 3 or 4 teams into the Qualifiers.

Instead they went into the Tailteann Cup unless they reached a provincial final, a situation Laois would have found themselves in this year having been relegated to Division 3.

Whether that competition ever sees the light of day remains to be seen but the GAA’s Fixture Taskforce Committee have two proposals that will go to Congress later this year.

The first is a convoluted format that sees every team start off in their province; but the beaten lower-ranked teams in Leinster and Ulster go to Munster and Connacht to make up eight-team competitions in two groups of four. It could mean Laois playing in both the Leinster and Munster championships in the same year.

The Tailteann Cup would remain – comprised of the bottom team in each of the provincial groups.

The other proposal suggests that the provincial championships switch to the spring and are played as stand-alone group format pre-season competitions.

The leagues would then move to the summer, and be the main competition, with five of the Division 1 teams going to the All Ireland stages, three of the Division 2 teams and the top two from Divisions 3 and 4. The remainder of the Division 3 and 4 teams go into the Tailteann Cup.

Introducing a tiered football championship was a priority of John Horan’s term as GAA President and while we’re not against the idea, we feel they’ve made a hames of what they’ve come up.

The obvious flaw in what is being proposed is that most teams will be starting the year aiming to avoid ending up in the Tailteann Cup. How can you then expect teams to get excited about playing in a competition they spent the entire season hoping they wouldn’t be in?

If that does come to pass, expect disinterest, withdrawals, weakened teams and quite possibly even walkovers.

But we’re absolutely not against the idea of tiered championships, just as they have in hurling, ladies football and camogie.

Indeed is the inter-county football championship the only GAA competition that isn’t tiered?

Nobody is suggesting at club level for example that Spink or Barrowhouse should be in the same competition as Portlaoise and Portarlington.

If the smaller clubs can work their way up – a la Rosenallis, Ballyfin or Courtwood – then more power to them. But when they’re not strong they fall back to a more relevant grade.

Among the arguments often made is that the lower tier competitions won’t get the same coverage. But what status or coverage did Limerick-Waterford or Longford-Carlow get last week anyway?

Comparing the lower tiers in hurling to football isn’t a like-for-like comparison. In the weaker hurling counties, hurling for the most part is a minority sport. That’s not always the case in football – all of which have vibrant club championships. There is far greater interest in football in most counties than there is in hurling.

The level a team plays at is really only of concern to the die-hards. Outside of that, the wider public will only sit up and take notice when there’s a bit of a bandwagon to hop on.

Often you’ll see a team win a junior or intermediate club championship and think that they are above that. But a county final and a trophy engages a community far beyond those immediately involved. The same would happen at inter-county level.

Before the Laois hurlers stunned Dublin in 2019, reaching and winning the Joe McDonagh Cup final in Croke Park absolutely captured the imagination in the county.

Laois jerseys were sold out in sports shops, there was a demand on train tickets, blue and white was the dominant colour on Jones Road and in the pubs around Croker.

To a lesser extent the same happened when the Laois footballers won the Division 4 league final and later reached the Leinster title in 2018. So many counties never get to experience that due to the ancient formats.

The argument about the provincial championships maintaining rivalries is a redundant one too. They prevent as many local battles as they give us. How much of a local derby is Louth-Carlow or Meath-Wexford? The increased chance of Louth-Armagh or Meath-Cavan would excite the counties far more.

The ladies football format of 13 senior, 13 intermediate and six junior teams (the odd numbers explained by the fact there was no relegation in 2020) is a fine structure.

In men’s inter-county, we’d go for 12 senior and 10 each at intermediate and junior. Go for two groups of six at senior and two of five at the other grades. You could still keep the provincial championships on their own and played beforehand.

At senior level give all teams two home group games, two away and one neutral. At intermediate and junior they could have two home and two away. Put the top team in each into a semi-final with a two-week break. Let second and third play in the quarter-finals. Promote and relegate two from each.

Ensure the finals are in Croke Park. Ensure there are junior and intermediate games on TV as part of the rights package sold. Consider a Friday night slot – scheduled way ahead of time – for local derbies and TV coverage.

The gap between Dublin and the rest is an obvious problem and not easy to address but giving the rest something tangible to play at the height of summer for has to be a priority too. For far too long that hasn’t been the case.

Everyone should be grown up enough to accept that at elite, inter-county level that senior, intermediate and junior should be the way of life. This isn’t the Go Games.

In years to come we’ll eventually look back and reflect on how bad a system we had for so long.

SEE ALSO – Check out all the previous Breaking Ball columns here

 

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