A knock-out solution from Croke Park
Damian Stack It’s back to the future for a winter spectacular knock-out All Ireland football championship
WHO needs a Delorean when you’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime global disruption? All it took was one little global pandemic to take us back to the future. Back to the days when everything was on the line. No qualifiers. No backdoor. None of the stuff we’ve come to take as a given for the last twenty years or so.
This year’s All Ireland Senior Football Championship is going to be about as old school as you can get with teams getting one chance and one chance alone to make their mark – all games will be finish on the day affairs.
There’s a reason the GAA moved towards the qualifier system from 2001 – straight knockout can be a cruel mistress for teams training all year long – and, yet, there’s something decidedly thrilling about the prospect of the type of championship most of us grew up on (that is those of us over the age of about twenty five or so).
Those really were the days weren’t they? Trips to Páirc Uí Chaoimh or Fitzgerald Stadium with butterflies in the pit of the stomach, knowing that it could all be over in practically a blink of an eye. You could cut the tension with a knife as the crowd gathered and the action played itself out.
It’s possible we’re guilty of over romanticising the good old days here – nostalgia is a hell of a drug – but it’s undeniable that something has been lost along the way. There hasn’t been the same edge to the provincial championships since the back-door came in, especially in Munster.
Of course, it hasn’t helped that Cork have gone seriously off the boil of late – that said they’re very much on the way back – but still the very presence of the safety net dilutes things. Both Kerry and Cork have won All Ireland championships through the qualifier route.
It’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of Cork and Kerry doing battle on the weekend of November 7 / 8. It’s hard not to get excited by a return to a championship structure more familiar to Mick O’Connell than Michael Darragh MacAuley.
No quarter-finals. No Super 8s. No filler. Every single game will be a potential blockbuster. Every single game will be of the utmost quality with the cream rising to the surface and doing so across the space of about two months.
If everything goes according to plan – if the weather holds, if the virus remains in check – this winter promises to be one hell of a ride with the games coming thick and fast. Should Kerry manage to take out the Rebels down by the Marina and make it all the way to the All Ireland final, they’ll be playing close on every other weekend.
That will bring its own challenges. This is going to be a seriously concentrated championship for everyone and will put undoubted pressure on teams physically, leaving very little time for recovery from injury. Even with relatively fewer games needed to win the All Ireland title, teams will feel the pressure.
Some have argued that this is a missed opportunity by the GAA to go for a totally open draw of thirty two teams. There’s merit to the argument, but it was never going to happen. The provincial councils have too much sway,
the provincial championships still have too much prestige attached to them.
While you can quibble here and there about what Croke Park have come up with, overall it’s a sensible compromise. Giving room to finish the National Leagues in October is welcome as not only does it maintain the integrity of the competition, but also because it gives teams something of a pre-season ahead of the championship.
It makes sense too that in hurling with most of the promotion and relegations already decided – bar in divisions 2 and 3 – Croke Park have instead focussed on having a qualifier system in the All Ireland series.
In this most unusual of situations, the GAA have had to cut their cloth accordingly and the suit they’ve come up with is a pretty good fit. It’ll be unusual to looking forward to an All Ireland final less than a week before Christmas, but that’s the thing: we will be (fingers crossed) looking forward to it.
There were times when we feared a total wipe-out this year – when John Horan expressed doubts about games being played while the necessity for social distancing remained in place, for instance – so anything is better than nothing.
Again, though, it’s not just the case that this is making the best of a bad lot. This is genuinely interesting and exciting stuff. An old-school straight knock-out championship isn’t a long-term solution, but as a once off it’s something to really be relished.
If you were starting from scratch you wouldn’t end up here. If you were starting from scratch you wouldn’t end up with an All Ireland final less than a week out from Christmas Day and, yet, now that that’s where we’ve ended up it sounds pretty fun and interesting doesn’t it? There will something almost romantic about it. Get ready for the ‘best Christmas present ever’ headlines.
No question about it, this will be a very different championship. It’s unlikely (but not impossible) that we’ll see packed houses at any stage this year. It won’t have that summer carnival feel that makes the championship oh so special.
Still, though, there’s enough here to whet the appetite and get the competitive juices flowing. Can’t wait? Neither can we.
HAVING worked so hard for it, to have it snatched away just like that must have been incredibly difficult to take. On Sunday they qualified. On Tuesday they trained and, by the time their next training session rolled around, the entire world had been turned upside down. Play suspended with no real indication of if or when the Division 2A final the Kerry hurlers had just qualified for would take place.
The longer the lockdown went on, the more discouraging the pronouncements from health officials and, even from the President of the GAA, the more difficult it was to imagine that any matches, let alone the Kingdom’s with Antrim in the league final, would take place.
It wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that the fog cleared and we got some indication that there would, after all, be games this year. Still, even then, there had to have been a certain amount of trepidation for Kerry hurling boss Fintan O’Connor and his players ahead of last Friday’s announcement of the fixtures plan.
Would the league final survive in the reduced season? What sort of championship would they get to play in? Would it be a straight knock-out affair as was being mooted for the All Ireland championships at senior level?
In the end they need not have worried. The Kerry hurlers have got pretty much everything they could have wished for. The league final with Antrim will be played – whether or not it’ll be played in Croke Park as had originally been expected remains to be seen – and the Joe McDonagh Cup will be played in its original form.
Where the Kerry footballers are essentially guaranteed only three games this year – two league fixtures and the Munster semi-final with Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh – the hurlers are guaranteed five high quality games – the league final and four rounds of the Joe Mac.
“Yeah we’re happy enough,” Fintan O’Connor confirmed on Monday afternoon.
“The league final will be played and the Joe McDonagh Cup final will be played as a curtain raiser for the All Ireland final, which is huge for everyone. There’s a lot of positives, but we’ll have to do our stuff before then.
“In the circumstances you couldn’t complain about anything, no matter what happened, but we’re delighted that the league final is going ahead. When you play in a competition you like to see it being finished.
JOE MCDONAGH CUP 2020
Group:
Antrim, Carlow, Westmeath
Round 1 – Round 2 – Round 3 – Round 4 – Round 5 –
28/29
Final –
Kerry, Meath,
Kerry v Meath, weekend of October 24/25
Westmeath v Kerry, weekend of October 31 / November 1
Antrim v Kerry, weekend of November 14/15
Kerry v Carlow, Saturday, November 21
bye, weekend of November
Sunday, December 13 (curtain raiser to senior All Ireland Hurling Final)
It’s not just the case that this is making the best of a bad lot. This is genuinely interesting and exciting stuff