BREAKING BAD

current It’s time to take a wrecking ball to the GAA’s board qualifier format and go back to the drawing

Qualifiers have sucked dry the intrigue that sustained the summer

FOR an association that has developed a reputation for policing hens at the crossroads, who would ever have thought that counting would prove so challenging. Last night saw the recount of the Christy Ring Cup final in Croke Park, with much relief when the returning officer finally deemed Meath elected to serve as champions for the next 12 months.

Meantime, down in Portlaoise last weekend, Shane Murphy went from fringe panel member to impact sub of the decade on the strength of just 40 seconds and getting his hands on one breaking ball.

It is unlikely that his name will ever be forgotten, most certainly not by those Armagh footballers in beery Lille during the week who were reported to have not exactly been overjoyed on hearing about their unlikely Championship reprieve. Their subsequent rendition of ‘Shane Murphy’s on fire’ was described by critics as ‘edgy’ and ‘too literal an interpretation’ of the terrace classic.

Ah, you have to laugh or else you would only laugh harder.

It is easy to hammer those who make honest-to-God mistakes but it also much easier to forgive them. To err is to be human and all that jazz.

Thing is, there was a far more brazen and deliberate miscalculation last weekend, but rather than it being seen as a mistake it was passed off as best practice without the hint of an apology.

The Ulster Council decided to take two weeks to fix the replay of the Cavan/Tyrone semi-final as they invoked their entitlement to take as much time as they want to go about their protracted business, in the process ensuring that the A section of the football qualifiers was thrown into chaos. It will now be played off in such a breathless whirr that should the losers of the Cavan-Tyrone game reach the All-Ireland quarter-finals they will have played five weeks on the bounce.

Ulster ultimately were bailed out to a point by the Armagh-Laois substitutes debacle which has ensured that disruption was inevitable, but one was a freakish occurrence rooted in an innocent error, the other a measured decision that displayed absolute contempt for the All-Ireland series and the players who play in it.

It is contempt which has been legislated for.

With every passing season, the qualifiers, introduced to compensate for the lop-sided provincial championships 15 years ago, have begun to resemble the worst elements of what they were brought in to address.

It is the GAA’s very own take on the Stockholm Syndrome and it is what happens when the cure is allowed to be infected by the disease.

It is rooted in the decision that was taken at the 2013 Congress to split the qualifiers in two – in the process ridding them of their open draw concept and ever since a Championship in dire need of mystery has been bleeding intrigue by the bucketload.

They have become lop-sided and predictable, just like the provinces who feed into them.

This year the goldfish bowl is on the A side while the shark-infested pool – Mayo, Cork and the losers of the Monaghan-Donegal replay – is with the B’s.

More than anything in their diminished state, they have sucked dry the intrigue that helped sustain the summer, never more so than at the quarter-final business end.

That draw thrilled because of the sense of the unknown as to which juggernaut from the qualifiers would come crashing into a provincial champion.

Silence on Ulster’s act of sabotage was just not good enough

We have a crystal clear memory of a boisterous hostelry in Donegal town reduced to absolute silence as the quarter-final draw was made live on radio in 2012, and Kerry rolled into their path.

There was no ale that the inn keeper had on tap that evening that could have infected his customers with such giddiness.

The agony of waiting and not knowing what your water is trying to tell you creates quite the buzz and ultimately quite the release.

That perished with the division of the qualifiers – there has been no need for a quarter-final draw since the split as teams go through preordained routes that can be seen half a mile off.

When the four quarter-finals were played on the one weekend, the Championship morphed into a festival. Every sport needs that, a weekend to celebrate and the last eight stopped becoming a number and instead became a state of mind.

That’s all gone too and for what? The qualifiers were split on the grounds that they would create a window for club activity and put an end to six-day turnarounds for losing teams.

There is absolutely no evidence that it has done either.

It was really introduced to take the heat of the provinces to halt the charge for badly needed reform of their own competitions, which are in dire need of being condensed.

But it suited better to pay lip-service to clubs and to treat their county players as used goods once they have fulfilled their core purpose, which is to keep the provincial cash tills ringing.

Croke Park’s silence this week on Ulster’s deliberate act of sabotage was not good enough, but then talk is cheap.

The best way to respond now is to go back and take those two halves and make it one again.

It is the only sum that makes sense.