Out with the old ... it’s time to be brave and bold
Desire for Championship overhaul is there
TALKING about the GAA and Championship structures would remind you of the old line about the lost Irish tourist. The wanderer who, after landing in a remote outpost and looking for directions, was met with a pithy local reply: ‘Well I wouldn’t start from here…’
And that is how it always feels when it comes to plotting a way forward for Gaelic football and the flagship All-Ireland competition.
The point of the conversation above is that if you want to get somewhere, it’s better to start from a point where you have a good chance of reaching your goal.
Even the most ardent defenders of the provincial championships have conceded that dividing a 32county island into four parts — one with 12 teams, another with nine, another with six and another with five — defies logic or convention. But such is the system of Leinster, Ulster, Munster and Connacht that has fed into the GAA’s main competition.
Starting afresh now would bring a whole new dynamic. Instead, the continuing conversations revolve around the various official plans that are on the table that are still based to an extent on parish pump politics and protecting vested interests.
“Change the
thing and freshen it up”
Last week, inter-county managers took part in a meeting to discuss the two main options that will go to Congress — a leaguebased All-Ireland series with a pre-season provincial championship or a re-drawn provincial championship structure with four groups of eight teams and the Allianz League format remaining the same. Any vote for change requires the support of 60% of delegates.
Given the impact of Covid-19 already on this year’s schedule, with the original start for the Allianz Leagues of February 27-28 expected to be pushed back at least a month, the planned introduction of the second tier Tailteann Cup is under threat with last year’s truncated knock-out format the ultimate fall-back option.
But the mood amongst managers only feeds into the notion that the GAA would be better placed starting from a better point.
Here’s Cavan manager Mickey Graham speaking on RTÉ radio this weekend. ‘A lot of managers, players and counties probably feel it’s time to change the thing up and freshen it up. We’re all open to change and what’s the best way to go about it? It will be interesting to see what happens. I’d say the GAA still have a lot of communicating to do with management, players and county boards before they make any decision on that.’
And this, coming from someone who guided his county to the most dramatic of Ulster title triumphs in 2020 — a first for the county in 23 years.
Down south, Tipperary made it a truly historic championship Sunday when they beat Cork to win a first Munster title since 1936. It says a lot then that Tipperary manager David Power still feels the provincial format has to be the first thing to come under the microscope.
Last week in the Irish Daily Mail, former Carlow manager Turlough O’Brien gave an illustration of the mood for radical change out there by suggesting that the GAA could adapt to the shrinking inter-county window by pushing everything to the summer. Running the All-Ireland Championship as a knock-out cup competition in tandem with a summer National League. ‘We need a really condensed intercounty season and there is room there to condense it even further. We could do this just the way they play the Premier League and the FA Cup at the same time. I don’t see why it can’t be done. ‘Last year showed the huge potential and passion the Championship can generate... the wave of excitement that swept across the country the evening Kerry got knocked out. It would be a great pity to lose that unpredictability.’
Or here’s Clare manager Colm Collins, now the longest serving senior inter-county football manager as he heads into an eighth season, speaking in the past on the same topic. ‘I would love to see an open draw with eight groups of four. The top two teams would advance to an All-Ireland A Championship and the bottom two teams would contest an AllIreland B Championship.
‘Certain counties are well capable of winning an All-Ireland — others go into a lull — but everyone should still have an opportunity to win the national competition. We’ll not be making the calls on it but I think it would energise the Championship no end. It is what it is and we’ll be preparing to do as best we can as ever under the current guise, but we live in hope.’
It’s that sort of simple model that has long been in vogue in the shape of a Champions League/ Europa League format and it has been hard to see why it hasn’t gained more currency in the GAA, giving every county a shot at the big one and the Sam Maguire Cup proper before finding their level.
If the GAA has shown one thing over the past 12 months, it’s a capacity to embrace radical change and to make bold decisions in light of the pandemic. Nothing sums up that as much as the one to embrace a split season model involving July All-Ireland finals with club activity to take precedence for the second half of the season.
It’s the same type of imaginative, logical thinking that is required now in terms of football’s flagship competition.