‘DATED SYSTEM’S A DISASTER FOR GAA’
FORMER Donegal star Brendan Devenney yesterday labelled Gaelic football’s provincial system ‘a disaster.’ Not even an Ulster Championship draw which offered up a couple of mouth-watering openinground clashes, including Donegal hosting Tyrone and Cavan travelling to Monaghan, could cover up the glaring weaknesses in the structure.
Indeed, yesterday’s draw merely highlighted the lop-sided nature of the system as Donegal-Tyrone and Derry-Armagh will square off against each other to take a place in the Ulster final.
At the same time, Galway will face New York and Sligo to reach the same stage.
‘It is a disaster,’ blasted Devenney.
‘We have to be realistic; the provincials have to go. And I say that as a Donegal man who loves the Ulster Championship. It is one of the highlights of the football year but for the sake of the competition, it has to go.
‘Right now, the top six teams will blow everyone else away. What good is that for spectators, what good is it for the teams getting hammered and what good is it for the teams who are doling out the hammerings. I mean, what is the point of Dublin riding roughshod over everyone in Leinster?’ said Devenney.
‘Imagine if there was no provincials and Dublin’s first game in a Championship round-robin was down in Killarney. Can you imagine the excitement that would create compared to what you have now?
‘That’s what the game needs to see happening rather than Dublin playing Louth, Carlow or Westmeath in a system which is just a disaster.’
Defenders of the provincial Championships argue that they offer the game’s smaller powers an attainable prize, but Devenney believes that argument is rooted in sentiment rather than reality.
‘The prospect of a giant-killing act as used to happen in previous times is slowly evaporating.
‘It rarely happens now. I know people will point to the likes of Fermanagh against Monaghan a couple of years ago, but that was a team that had to play a horrible, defensive game, who got a lucky goal at the end and had to depend on the opposition playing poorly.
‘There is no romance now where the underdogs go out with a swashbuckling approach and hope to get a result.
‘The top teams playing the small teams now — what is the point? The shocks are gone. You get the odd shock maybe every 30 games but nobody seems to be counting all the hammerings teams are taking.
‘Junior teams don’t play senior teams at club level but we are still asking junior teams to play senior teams in the provincial Championships.’ But the GAA, whose political and under-pinned administrative by the structures provincial are system, have no plans to go interfere with the established format, instead it will seek to introduce a second-tier Championship aimed at Division 3 and 4 teams at Saturday week’s Special Congress.
It is expected to get the green light from delegates, but critics of the proposed change argue that it will see Division 3 and 4 teams play in a competition which, similar to lower-tiered hurling, will receive minimal publicity and get locked into a tiered system which will see them fall even further behind.
‘Hurling has got nothing to do with the game of football apart from the fact that you have 15 players on the pitch and the scoring system is the same.
‘You can have a county like Fermanagh who can get into the hardest provincial final in Ireland but you stick a Division 3 team in hurling into the Munster or Leinster Championship and they would get destroyed. You have people who keep going back to the hurling to claim that counties end up locked into a tier but there is no comparison.
‘You take a county like Derry in Division 3, who if they make the jump into Division 2 can be competitive.
‘You have to be at a certain level traditionally in hurling whereas in football, if you have the right structures in place, counties can move through the grades so you can’t put the two together.
‘The tier two Championship is the only way to go and it will make the leagues even better because counties will know that if they want to make it at the highest level they have got to reach Division 2,’ added Devenney.
Ulster SFC — preliminary round: Monaghan v Cavan; Quarter-finals: Donegal v Tyrone; Derry v Armagh; Fermanagh v Down; Monaghan/Cavan v Antrim.
Semi-finals: Donegal/Tyrone v Derry/ Armagh; Fermanagh/Down v Monaghan/Cavan/Antrim.