PRISONER OF ITS OWN TRADITION

Football’s provincial system continues to be the major hindrance to tangible progress

‘IMBALANCE AT PROVINCIAL LEVEL IS NOT IN NUMBERS, BUT STANDARDS’

THE less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it,’ once observed Mark Twain. The publication of this week’s GAA Fixtures Calendar Review Task Force reminded us there is no best-before date on wisdom, which is more than can be said about the GAA’s provincial system, which continues to poison progress.

It being the season of goodwill, we are reluctant to play the role of Grinch, mainly because the latest attempt to plot a way to a better and fairer fixtures schedule – and a more balanced inter-county competition structure – has much going for it.

Given the absolute complexity of acquiring the balance the GAA is seeking to find, there is no simple undiscovered pathway, no matter how often some blowhards insist on drawing up their blueprint on the back of a beermat before closing time.

In that sense, and even despite the justified actions of the Club Players Association (CPA) in withdrawing from the task force, there is a whole raft of sensible recommendations which have emerged.

Proposals to put a limit on the number of senior and intermediate teams competing in county championships at 16; a revamped All-Ireland Under 20 championship that would be wrapped up by July, a ban on all inter-county challenge games in April and a mercy killing of the All-Ireland junior football championship reek of good sense.

In terms of governance, there is also a proposal for an oversight committee, to be served by four full-time personnel (one for each province) to monitor fixture programmes at club level.

It sounds good, but it is just a beefed-up version of what is there already – provincial councils are invested with oversight responsibilities – but in the absence of sanctions that hurt, the likelihood is that the clubs will still dance to the county manager’s tune.

But this week’s report is undermined by two flaws, one of the GAA’s own making, the other bequeathed by history.

We won’t spend too long ploughing old ground, but yet again it exposed the folly of the GAA president John Horan’s insistence on pushing through a tier-two football championship before this committee had delivered its recommendations.

The end result is two proposals for football championship reform which propose pathways to a tiertwo championship that differ from what was imposed by Congress.

The latter represents a tweaking of a deeply flawed championship format, so what chance have either of these – only one of which is truly radical – of ever seeing the light of day?

It smacks of notional democracy – and echoes the CPA’s suspicion that this was a “Trojan Horse” exercise in maintaining the status quo – to send these proposals out for discussion before the public have had a glimpse of the recently constructed tier-two championship in action.

Why did the GAA leadership not hold fire and instruct the committee in its terms of reference, to include at least one option for a tier-two competition in its recommendations?

Had that been the case, we might all have been somewhat more convinced that this was an exercise in reform rather than one in free thought.

The reality is the GAA is a prisoner of its tradition, walled in by a political culture averse to change.

In one sense, you can understand where the GAA leadership is coming from in that any proposal that will dispose of, or even side-track, the provincial championships, will not convince turkeys to embrace the joy of Christmas.

But there is also another reality that inter-county football as a competitive entity will never maximise its potential until that provincial prison gate opens.

The very idea that reform can be achieved by a redrawing of the provinces into four regions of eight, cannot be sold as ‘radical’ reform, because it misses the whole point.

This idea has been peddled for an age – Dublin CEO John Costello raised this in his annual report in 2011 and it was fleshed out further by the Football Review Committee two years later – but it fails to address the core point, namely that the imbalance at provincial level is not in numbers but in standards.

The Munster Championship, by inheriting Wicklow and Wexford, does not achieve parity of competitive esteem with an Antrim-less Ulster Championship, it just means the importation of more cannon fodder for the big guns in the deep south.

It will not alter the reality that the game will have one provincial championship of note and while Ulster’s loss would be mourned if it was wiped off the face of the GAA’s calendar list, little else would.

The biggest lie peddled is that the provincial system facilitates ageold rivalries, when it merely accommodates short road trips for supporters.

A bit like the old neighbourly gathering in rural Ireland for the killing of a pig, you might get a bit of a crowd but you don’t necessarily get a spectacle that enriches.

True rivalry is not facilitated by geography but by a cocktail of fear, intrigue and begrudging respect. There is a reason why Tranmere do not enjoy ‘derby’ status with Liverpool even though they are of the one parish, while Manchester United do.

For the same reason, Dublin gnaws at a place in the Mayo gut which will always be beyond Sligo’s reach.

The other radical proposal is only half appealing – there is much to advocate the flipping of the season as there is in a summer league championship which is inclusive and will accommodate teams fighting in their own weight division, but why does it feel a bit like having to eat a plate of spinach so that you are then allowed a spoon of sherry trifle?

Perhaps because the only way that can be achieved is by the provincial championships being played on a round-robin basis, although the McGrath and O’Byrne Cups played on a loop through the spring might serve as an alternative to the penal system if season tickets were issued to criminals.

One ray of hope is that in a survey conducted to inform the task force of the public view, almost half (46 per cent) could see a future that did not involve the provincial championships.

And were the provincials to be consigned to history or the pre-season, an inter-county calendar could be achieved that might facilitate fewer matches but more competitive satisfaction for the inter-county game while securing a bigger window for the club one.

It is one possibility, but we will never know until that prison wall is breached.