Plain truth is that a league decider serves little purpose
AS WE kept half an eye on how the national leagues have been spluttering to their dreary conclusion over the past couple of weeks, the late American satirist Paul Krassner sprung to mind.
A contemporary of Lenny Bruce and Kurt Vonnegut, Krassner once said ‘to watch people as though you were observing a Martian’, which seems like ideal advice ahead of spending a gloomy and thundery February afternoon in Healy Park, but that’s not the reason we thought of him. One collection of his writing — worth seeking out, by the way — is titled ‘The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race’.
No, it’s not a history of the National League since 1925, though we would understand if you were under that impression. Calling the GAA’s secondary competition a slow bicycle race has now entered the lexicon of GAA cliché, as much as ‘blanket defence’ and players and managers using their moment of glory to declare ‘everyone wrote us off’.
It’s no longer only the league, now it is a slow bicycle race. But there is no more appropriate description for a competition that plays out to such strange rhythms every year. You can set your clock by it.
IT starts like a train at the end of January with rampant public interest and teams going full pelt. By the middle of the league, half the sides are doing heavy training, while of the other half, there is always a county or two in crisis — Kildare footballers or Waterford hurlers, for example. Right up to what we saw this weekend, a competition grinding to a halt with shadow teams engaging in shadow-boxing to a largely indifferent public.
There is no other sporting tournament in the world that becomes less competitive and teams take less seriously with each passing week. However, it’s the way things have always been with the league. This year is no different to any other, except now the split season and the ridiculously condensed inter-county year makes people a lot more aware of the competition’s idiosyncrasies. And managers are no longer disguising the fact that they are relieved not to reach a league final, as was evident in Kevin McStay’s good humour after his Mayo side were beaten by Derry.
In the bowels of Dr Cullen Park last weekend, after Donegal confirmed their inevitable promotion straight back to Division 1, Jim McGuinness was asked by Off the Ball’s Tommy Rooney about the prospect of playing Armagh in Croke Park in the second-tier final when both teams might be eyeing a more significant clash later in the summer. The Donegal boss took the novel approach of suggesting whatever anyone thinks of the value of a Division 2 title, they will be taking it seriously, saying that to do anything else would be unfair on Allianz. The insurance company has backed the league for more years than anyone can remember, but the sight this spring of teams avoiding finals and taking the foot off the pedal once safe must have them wondering if they are getting bang for their buck.
The plain truth is that the league finals next weekend, especially in the two top divisions, serve little or no purpose. On RTÉ 2’s League Sunday last week, they tackled the thorny issue of teams trying to avoid a match in Croke Park next weekend, Peter Canavan talked quite a bit of sense, as he generally does with his punditry, and one hopes that Jim Gavin and others on his Football Committee were listening. It’s a league. Whomever finishes top after seven games should be declared the champions. It works for almost every other sport.
‘The nature of the league with the league finals is that teams that are already through, could play weakened teams [in their final game]. And that could be to the detriment of some team. It could put some team down,’ the Tyrone legend pointed out.
‘I would say there would be a lot of support if they decided to look into the structure of the National League and do away with the league finals. I know that mightn’t go down well in some quarters. The integrity of the competition is paramount and at the minute, I don’t think you are getting that. If it was a straight race to the top, then Kerry would be going out trying to win their last game, Donegal and Armagh likewise in their last game in Division 2.’
There was a proposal to do away with the daft league finals a few years ago that was voted down, with the GPA, in its infinite wisdom, leading the opposition. The reason was that the Division 3 and 4 finals gave players from smaller counties a rare day out in Croke Park — but the inception of the Tailteann Cup now gives four counties that every year — and two of them get two days out. In games that mean much more.
CLEARLY, with Mayo heading to the Bronx in ten days’ time, McStay and his players didn’t want the hassle of a league final, even if they are nominally supposed to be defending the title. McGuinness and Kieran McGeeney are also a little more concerned with peaking their players for the bear-pit of the Ulster championship, so it will be understandable if they take next Sunday as an exercise in making sure nobody gets injured.
The funny thing is we can remember teams going straight into Championship from a league final long before the split season. I can recall travelling up to Croke Park in 1995 to watch Donegal lose a league final to Derry by 12 points to eight — their third successive defeat in a decider — and the following week, a Donegal team, that included McGuinness, ended the summer of All-Ireland champions, Down — this was in the day before the back door.
Those sort of events were common occurrences down the decades and ensured that the belief that ‘league is league but Championship is Championship’ was imprinted onto the consciousness of every GAA player and supporter, was part of the very bloodstream of the sport. It still is. Even more so now.
A free thinker like Paul Krassner would probably have enjoyed how deeply weird the national leagues are. But he did offer another piece of advice that the GAA should heed. ‘Irreverence should be our only sacred cow,’ he declared once, which could be viewed as a suggestion to get rid of the provincial model that’s holding the Championship back.