The Super 8s leave too many watching on from a distance
A TIERED football Championship has arrived: it’s called the Super 8s.
Meet the new round-robin AllIreland senior football Championship quarter-final stage, featuring two groups of four.
Otherwise known as Division 1 (and friends). A glorified version of the top flight, minus Mayo, where every other county will have played in the highest tier of the National League this season, or will be playing in it next season. A ‘festival’ of football. If you define festival as a strictly invite-only event where tickets don’t go on general sale.
There’s a far bigger issue than Dublin getting two ‘home’ games in the Super 8s — it’s that 25 teams get zero games.
As Aidan O’Brien, former Wexford manager, succinctly put it: ‘And now the counties that need to develop sit idly by while the strong go to war to get even stronger.’
It clearly struck a chord. Ciaran Deely, London manager, flagged it with a one-word stamp of approval: ‘Truth’.
The Super 8s could have featured Armagh and Fermanagh, the two teams that played out the Division 3 League final. Or Laois, the Division 4 upstarts who made it to a Leinster final. But it doesn’t. Armagh lost a thriller to Roscommon by 2-22 to 1-19, Fermanagh were blitzed 3-20 to 0-18 by Kildare while Laois needed goalkeeper Graham Brody to make six saves against Monaghan to avoid another drubbing after the 19point defeat inflicted by Dublin.
Now the Super 8s in its own right is going to be brilliant. After a summer of hurling love, it will put the people’s game back front and centre.
This weekend’s double-bill at Croke Park alone includes the four provincial champions going at it – Kerry versus Galway, Dublin versus Donegal — in what would be a hugely attractive All-Ireland semifinal double bill back in the day.
As always though, there is a bigger picture.
The single biggest issue in senior inter-county football is the growing divide, both on and off the field. Football and financial. Between the game’s haves and have-nots. The Super 8s is only going to fuel that divide, giving high-intensity, high-profile games to the very teams that enjoy all the same privileges in the spring.
The GAA is not meant to enshrine elitism in its structures; it’s not meant to rig the game against those trying to bridge the gap.
A three-year trial will tell whether the Super 8s will resemble a gated community, football’s answer to a Beverly Hills tour where Joe Public can visit the celebrity mansions, stop outside and peer in, all the time wishing they were on the other side looking out.
Maybe a Super 8s bus tour can be organised for all those supporters, players and management teams with nothing to do for the rest of the summer. Take in the west coast and the game’s celebrated stars. The picture-postcard coastal village of Kilcar where the McHughs learned to make the ball talk. On then to Damien Comer’s Annaghdown, where the placename originates from Dún, meaning ‘an enclosed settlement’, a phrase which might resonate. Down south to Fossa to visit the residence of David Clifford, where Hollywood A-lister Michael Fassbender also grew up and who could yet end up as a stop on that Beverly Hills guide.
Over to Dublin for some east coast football and the green swathes of St Anne’s Park in Raheny where Brian Fenton learned to kick a ball. The talented midfielder is a poster boy for what is a golden age for Dublin football. Part of a team capable of beating anyone, anywhere — arguably the greatest in the county’s history — they don’t need another artificially created competitive advantage of playing two games in Croke Park when their opponents in the same group get just one home game.
‘If top counties are rewarded with extra tier of games, why shouldn’t the weaker ones be provided with equal playing opportunities,’ wondered O’Brien.
And that’s what it boils down to. The Super 8s has to act as a bridge to a Championship that isn’t a developmental hothouse for the best teams, that doesn’t just give extra games to Division 1 (and friends), but to everyone.
It won’t last beyond the threeyear trial. Because a lot of those counties who have fought against a two-tier Championship will realise that the show is going to go on without them.