BEYOND REPAIR
When will those in power realise that the provincial championships are no longer fit for purpose?
WITH the blessing of hindsight, Trevor Giles might be grateful that injury forced him to miss out on the 2005 Leinster Championship.
True, had he been fit he might well have made the difference when Meath fell by just two points to Dublin in that year’s quarter-final, but in missing that game he gets to remember the Leinster Championship as a thriving democracy rather than a one-team monopoly.
In his 11-year career, Giles won three Leinster SFC medals which in the modern currency might not be worth a whole lot, especially as he also won two All-Irelands and three All-Stars awards. The Meath man is also one of only two footballers, along with Dublin’s Brian Fenton, to be named player of the year twice under the All-Star scheme.
But his provincial medals were worth a lot as his career coincided with an era when Leinster felt like a true footballing republic with five counties — Dublin, Meath, Kildare, Laois and Westmeath — all getting their hands on the Delaney Cup.
Having missed that 2005 quarterfinal, he never played again for the Royal County while Dublin have gone on to win 16 of the last 17 Leinster titles.
But if his memories of playing in the Leinster SFC remain warm, sentiment hardly colours his opinion on what the long-term future holds for the format.
‘They don’t excite me, they haven’t excited me for a lot of years. I know Dublin maybe have come back a little bit, but I expect a big bounce from them next year so you couldn’t say with confidence that next year’s Leinster Championship is going to be very competitive,’ said Giles this week.
‘So if they got rid of the provincial championships it wouldn’t cost me a thought whatsoever.
‘The ’90s was a glory era in Leinster without harping back to the past.
‘It was really competitive with huge crowds and it would be great to see it back to that again I’ve not seen a really competitive Leinster Championship in the last few years so if the proposals say get rid of the Leinster Championship and other provincial championships, that’s fine by me.’
What is striking about Giles’ comments is that he holds no hard or fast opinion on either of the two options — the equalisation of the four provinces into eight teams or a league-based championship — that will be debated at this month’s Special Congress but has seen enough in the decline of a competition that once enthralled him to know that it no longer has a future.
He comes with no agenda other than the system as it currently applies is not working, and yet the most likely outcome from the October 23 summit is that the GAA’s voting classes will go with what they know best and with what works worst.
While the Leinster SFC is the obvious example of how the provincial system is beyond repair, it is hardly the only one.
There are numbers of ways to measure just how-lopsided the provincial championships are but perhaps the best way to gauge it is through the lens of the Allianz League, given that a league/championship is both the most radical option for reform and the one favoured by the majority of inter-county players and managers.
Since the League was streamlined to four straight divisions of eight in 2008, 52 of the 56 provincial titles have been won by teams playing in the top two divisions.
There will hardly come as a surprise — or the fact that 41 titles were claimed by teams who spent the spring playing top-tier football – but one of the arguments for retaining the current system suggests it gives every team a shot at glory.
It feels, though, more like a hopeless shot in the dark.
The four teams from outside top two divisions that won provincial silver all came from Division 3 — Roscommon (2010), Monaghan (2013) and, of course, Tipperary and Cavan last year.
And the success of the latter pair owed as much to a surreal winter championship as to any real significant power change, something proven on the double by subsequent hammerings in the All-Ireland series and their relegation to the League’s bottom tier. And here is another statistic that gets to the core issue. The average losing margin in this year’s provincial championship over 25 games ran at more than 10.5 points per game, while the average losing margin in this year’s abbreviated leagues was just over 5.5 points across 60 games. The above reality shows the provincial championship is no friend to the game’s lower tier counties while football’s secondary competition is twice as competitive as its premier one. And the League is the only measure that can be trusted as it is the only competition format that is working.
It has not only allowed lower tier counties a realistic opportunity at moving to a higher level and empowered them to stay there.
Monaghan may have won an Ulster SFC coming from Division 3, but they were already on an upwards trajectory having achieved promotion that season. Indeed, it has been the retention of their top tier status for the past six seasons that has made them a genuine top six team, not the number of Anglo Celt Cups they have won.
The league format has given teams a true sense of their worth, while far too often the provincial championship has made sides feel worthless.
And it has left the vast majority, including Giles, who have watched on feeling bored.
‘I can see a day where the provincial championships are gone, absolutely,’ he declared this week.
The pity is that those who hold the power do not possess the same vision.