Revolution comes with some tiers

IT MIGHT not make them feel any better, but Westmeath brought clarity and urgency to the pressing need for championship reform.

And in the process, it also exposed the folly peddled by those who believe that there is joy to be found in freedom of expression on a football pitch by ‘going for it.’

In his post-match interview, Tom Cribbin (below) hinted that it was the request of his players to play to a more orthodox rhythm, and while that had a ring of abdication of his responsibility it was also understandable.

How do you sell a containment gameplan to players which had yielded to 13 and 15 point defeats in the previous two seasons?

You simply can’t, and the players curiosity to see how they would fare playing to a more ambitious game-plan was understandable which, it must be noted, is more than can be said for Longford in 2015 when Jack Sheedy insisted that staying true to his footballing philosophy was worth the price of seeing his players humiliated by 27 points.

What both of those results showed – as does the comfort of Dublin’s pursuit of a 12th provincial title in 13 years – is that playing to lose is a dispiriting thing when confronted by a team on a completely different level.

That is not going to change anytime soon for the rest of Leinster – with the exception of Kildare and possibly Meath.

The rest need to be released to a place where they can go play to win. A tiered championship is no longer simply a fanciful concept, it has become a pathway which has to be taken sooner rather than later.