Derry show League is a Glass that’s half empty
IT’S one of the great oxymorons of the GAA that every team wants to be in Division One, yet nobody particularly wants to win it.
That’s long been the case but it’s particularly so now with the split season, which has reduced the latter stages to a bit of a farce.
Despite all of the changes to the GAA calendar, there is still much that needs to be fixed.
The fact the League now rolls into the Championship makes the final rounds of Division One a bit of a procession.
Derry’s seven changes before throw-in was a real disappointment for the neutral last Saturday.
I was hoping that they would really go after Dublin in Celtic Park but, instead, they effectively waved the white flag before a ball was kicked.
They were well within their rights to do so, however, and are not the first team to get points on the board early and then pull the handbrake.
I referenced here a few weeks ago that Conor Glass would need time out during the League – I didn’t think Mickey Harte would choose this game to put him in cold storage.
Perhaps the possibility of a League final against the Dubs at the end of the month had a bearing on Harte’s team selection.
And I think that’s the first place that the GAA needs to start. It’s time for the League finals to go.
If there were no League finals, I believe that Derry would have had a very different approach last Saturday night.
No team wants to be in a League final less than Mayo and Kevin Mcstay is making no secret of it.
They were burned badly from the seven-day turnaround between last year’s final and Championship opener against Roscommon and if they were to get to the final again, they would once again have no break before the Championship.
Granted, it’s New York this time but travelling to America on a Thursday after a League final is a logistical headache that Mayo don’t want.
They play Derry in Castlebar on Paddy’s day knowing that they are effectively safe from relegation.
It could well turn out to be a glorified training match.
Surely something is fundamentally wrong if the holders aren’t particularly interested in defending their title?
Kerry are normally associated with pushing hard for League titles – they have won three out of the last four (shared with Dublin in 2021) – but it appears that they too have lost interest in the League.
They are embarking on a warm weather training camp straight after the final round and when Jack O’connor was asked about his team’s ambition for the League after beating Tyrone last Sunday, his response was quite amusing.
“We’ll have a chat about how we go at the last two games, basically,” he said. “There’s several different ways you could go at it but we’ll discuss that with the players and make a decision.”
What sort of serious competition has players debating as to whether they will try and win it or not?
It can’t go on like this.
Whether it’s cutting League finals and/or pushing out the Championship by a couple of weeks, something needs to be done.
Otherwise the best structured competition which pitches the best eight teams against each other is going to die a slow death.