Golden chance for leagues
McGovern: split season offers glorious opportunity
I WAS in receipt of lengthy email correspondence from a GAA friend and associate of long standing during the week, writes Alan Aherne.
Jim McGovern may be a native of Longford, but he has contributed immensely to the growth and prosperity of the Association here in various capacities since his arrival to teach in Enniscorthy CBS in the early eighties.
Jim was full-forward on the Senior championship-winning Starlights team of 1983, and he manned the same position for the county footballers from 1984 to 1988.
He also represented the Wexford Juniors on several occasions, and has managed and coached various club and inter-county teams.
Away from the playing fields, it was largely through his promptings that the All-County Leagues were established in 1995. And while the 25th anniversary was ruined by Covid-19, the decision to introduce a split season that was passed at Congress on the weekend before last has energised Jim.
Without further ado, I will re-produce his thoughts on the opportunity that decision presents in full here:
Dear Alan,
When Liam Spratt walked into a dejected Horeswood dressing-room in Parnell Park on Sunday, November 20, 2011 in the immediate aftermath of the club’s gallant loss to St. Brigid’s of Blanchardstown in the first round of the Leinster Club championship to interview team manager, Derek O’Reilly, as team trainer I said to him in passing that it was time we adopted a two-seasons approach or words to that effect.
Liam seemed rather dismissive of the idea at the time but appeared to be more receptive when I brought it up with him again when he interviewed me after the Senior football relegation final of 2014 involving Kilanerin and Adamstown when the latter shocked the football world by winning by eight points.
It was finally introduced in 2020 and, even though it came in during exceptional times, it was still very welcome. The clubs in Wexford, I note, have voted for the two seasons approach again this year with 77% of them wanting the hurling to go first again which is just recognising realities.
A point of clarity: what I meant at the time was not just two seasons in Wexford, but also two seasons for hurling and football nationally if it could be done as I feel it would really benefit a dual county such as Wexford and strengthen both our Senior hurling and football county panels.
But back to that Horeswood match in 2011. Our preparations for that game were very restricted by the great run of the club’s Junior hurlers (trained by the recently-appointed Carlow Senior team manager, Tom Mullally) who won the county title and went on to reach the Leinster Club semi-final which they were unlucky to lose by just two points to Ballyfin of Laois on November 13, 2011.
One week later we played St. Brigid’s and our preparations were not what they might have been going into a game of such importance as, apart from one challenge game, we had not trained collectively since beating Castletown in the county final on Sunday, October 16.
That, of course, could not be helped and was absolutely no fault of the hurlers who had a great run.
But if that was putting us at an immediate disadvantage, worse was to follow when we heard just a few hours before the game that star defender Niall Murphy, who had recently played for Wexford, was held up unavoidably in England where he was now working and would not be able to make it over for the game.
It was a real hammer blow and Niall’s loss was further accentuated when Paddy Andrews (no doubt out to prove a point as Pat Gilroy had dropped him from the Dublin panel before their breakthrough All-Ireland success that same year) went on to prove to be too hot to handle and scored 1-3 against us. His goal came with four minutes left and finally broke our resistance as the game was really in the balance up to that point.
Of course, St. Brigid’s had all the advantages going into that game as, apart from home advantage and a very strong midfield pairing in Barry Cahill of Dublin and John O’Loughlin of Laois, it was also their sixth game in seven weeks and so they had serious momentum built up.
They went on to reach the Leinster Club final where they lost to a Dessie Dolan-inspired Garrycastle from Westmeath. One has always wondered what might have been for Horeswood that year had there been a two-seasons approach.
It’s not inconceivable that Horeswood could have had two Leinster titles as well as two county titles in 2011!
But speaking of the two-seasons approach brings one back to the early ’90s, 1994 to be exact, when I was appointed Chairperson of a County Board sub-committee to look at two motions.
One was my own motion from Glynn-Barntown which called for the introduction of a separate league and knockout championship, with the other from Half Way House-Bunclody which suggested the introduction of two seasons in Wexford - one for hurling and one for football.
Incidentally, the other members of that sub-committee were Denis Cadogan, Seán Quirke, John Denton, Michael Wallace and Oliver McGrath. We were all extremely concerned about the fixtures chaos in the county at the time and worked extremely hard over a long period of time to improve the situation.
We gave the Bunclody motion a lot of careful consideration but felt it was a bit too radical at that time, especially given the fact that we had agreed to bring in an All-County League and a knockout championship.
We did, however, feel that, ultimately, it was the way to go for such a dual county as Wexford and I don’t think any of us visualised that it would be a further 25 years for the two-seasons model to be introduced.
Speaking of the year 2020, I don’t think many people realised that it marked the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the All-County Leagues. Looking back, personally speaking, I don’t think they have had the impact we’d like them to have had, with some clubs having a very flippant attitude towards them.
There were exceptions of course, and one notable one was Rathgarogue-Cushinstown who we all know went on a wonderful odyssey all the way to the All-Ireland Junior football final in Croke Park in early 2020.
When I asked their team manager, James Bolger, how his club had benefited from the leagues, he said the following: ‘Absolutely (we did benefit). Our little bit of success was down to taking the league seriously.
‘Especially with the bigger divisions when we were Junior a few years ago, we were playing in Division 2 of the league which was a huge help to us. It definitely brought on our team.’
Of course, that was one of the central aims of the leagues: to give teams more than one route to success or a higher level of playing, given that only one team can win a championship in any given year and be promoted to a higher grade.
Interestingly, Rathgarogue-Cushinstown’s opponents in that All-Ireland final were Na Gaeil from Tralee who have used the Kerry leagues (on which a lot of our All-County leagues were based) to develop their club and dine out at the top table.
They were in Division 4 in 2016 but by 2019 had progressed to the first division where they were playing the top Senior teams in the county. And they were also supplying Jack Barry and Diarmuid O’Connor to the county team where they lined out on more than one occasion at midfield together - not bad for a small Junior club!
As I have alluded to, back in 1994 in Wexford, while we studied carefully the fixtures systems of all counties in Ireland, we paid a lot of attention to the fixtures system in the Kingdom.
I specifically examined the so successful Kerry leagues brought in by a visionary Chairman, the late and great Doctor Jim Brosnan, circa 1970.
Dr. Jim, a Dingle GP, was an outstanding inter-county footballer himself with two All-Ireland medals to his credit. He was flown from the USA for the 1955 final against Dublin and his two points early in the second-half of that game are generally credited with turning that famous final Kerry’s way.
Jim impressed me as someone who had a great understanding of the need for ordinary club players to have games on a regular basis. And that really struck a chord with me given how irregular games were in Wexford in the early 1990s.
He was a football socialist really and was against elitism in any form. His leagues became the envy of other counties and as the ‘Irish Times’ said in its obituary after his death in December 2011, the leagues ‘have been a cornerstone of Kerry’s development as the most successful football county in the history of the GAA’. Only recently both Pat O’Shea and Paul Galvin have reiterated those very same sentiments to me.
Kerry won two Sam Maguires during the 1960s and appeared in other finals, but they certainly did not rest on their laurels and Dr. Jim saw to that. He recognised that players in his own county were still getting too few games.
He gave the example of Tarbert who in 1965 played just four games but in 1971, after Brosnan had brought in the leagues, played 47 games (a huge number admittedly) and also contested the Intermediate championship final of 1971.
In Wexford I clearly remember my late neighbour, Dick Pierce from Killurin, telling me that he usually got just one game a year when he was playing as Glynn-Barntown often got knocked out in the first round.
So, what were young men to do, twiddle their thumbs? No, many went off and played soccer in particular, some even helping to found soccer clubs where they knew they would get a regular game each weekend and, of course, these clubs are now very well established.
Our league games mostly had to be played on Saturday because the soccer games were played on Sundays and GAA clubs didn’t want a clash, as if there was one they knew they probably wouldn’t be able to field a team.
Such a situation would be unthinkable in Kerry, Dr. Jim Brosnan alluded to, further saying that Kerry had faced up to soccer 30 years ago (speaking in 1994).
You could argue that we in Wexford did rest on our laurels. The Model county also won two All-Ireland Senior titles during the 1960s and appeared in another two finals but, while Kerry went on to win four All-Irelands in the 1970s and five in the ’80s, our only success since 1968 has been in 1996.
In fact, Kerry have won 16 All-Irelands since and including 1970, while Wexford has won just one. And this is certainly not an anti-soccer rant as I played soccer for years while abroad and still retain a keen interest in the game.
So, the All-County Leagues that were introduced in 1995 were an honest attempt to give players games on a regular basis while, to be frank, also worrying about closing the stable door long after the horse had bolted.
And they certainly have benefited any club that takes them seriously; Rathgarogue-Cushinstown is but one example. Another is Castletown who have appeared in finals quite frequently, winning a high percentage of them.
However, they are still not being taken seriously enough by some clubs, with a flippant attitude being prevalent. In fact, in recent times a couple of prominent clubs have not taken part in the leagues at all, preferring to play in the Leinster leagues.
This is a dreadful way to treat the second most important competition in the county and should not be allowed under any circumstances. In fact, if you do not play in the league, you should not be allowed to play in the championship.
A number of years ago I took charge of the Adamstown Senior football team and with us unlikely to win the Senior championship, we took the league very seriously. We got to the Division 1 semi- final and about four hours before the game I got a phone call telling me that one of our star players, James Breen, would be unable to play the game as one of his bullocks had gone missing.
Now, James was the kind of player you would like to go to war with and I would have loved to have had him in the trenches when I was playing myself. I knew right away that we could not entertain serious thoughts of winning the game without James, so I immediately decided to go and help James look for the valuable bullock.
James and myself spent a couple of hours walking his farm looking for the animal which was eventually found. James was able to play the game and contributed significantly as we fought from eight points down with 15 minutes left to draw the game at full-time.
The game, as per instruction from the County Board, was now due to go to extra-time. The other semi-final was being played that evening too and by sheer coincidence that game ended in a draw also and extra-time was played.
However, our opponents refused to play extra-time and retreated to the dressing-rooms. We stayed on the pitch and were awarded the game. We did nothing wrong and were going exactly according to the regulations.
Personally speaking, I certainly didn’t wish to take unfair advantage but I wasn’t going to flout regulations that I was instrumental in bringing in and was not for one moment going to engage in something that would demean or belittle the league, especially after that bullock-finding expedition earlier in the evening!
I have told this story not to get at anybody or apportion blame but simply to illustrate the seriousness with which I was taking the league and how important I felt it was to the team I was training at that time.
There is no question but that the importance of the All-County Leagues have declined in recent years and I suppose the ultimate insult was having no promotion or relegation, a sine qua non of any league.
I was aghast at this and definitely worried about the future of the leagues. Teams going up and down divisions are in my view the lifeblood of any league and not having that turns the whole thing into a farce.
I do note, though, that for 2021 promotion and relegation have been restored although whether any league games can be played this year remains to be seen.
In relation to the 2021 leagues and a decision taken in early 2020, Alan, you wrote in your column, of Tuesday, March 10, 2020 the following: ‘Each division will have eight teams divided into two groups of four, guaranteeing three matches apiece, with the top two in each group proceeding to semi-finals, and the bottom two taking part in relegation semi-finals.
That was one of the central aims of the leagues: to give teams more than one route to success
‘Two teams will be promoted and two relegated from each division annually. And, because of the reduction in matches, the leagues will be concluded before the championships resume in August.’
I think in the light of the split season (due to be introduced in 2022) and the smaller championship groups, this structure is going to have to be reviewed and more league games provided, but this may not be possible until 2022.
Of course, there will be District games to add to the number of games provided and that is not unwelcome. Back in 1994, however, the feedback we were getting as a committee (and we did surveys of players, officials and team managements) was that players in particular were getting tired of playing the same old teams in their Districts year after year, and they were very keen for something new to arise.
I suppose it’s a balance we require now as it has always been a great experience to view a feisty local derby. But having said all that, there is no question but that the All-County leagues must remain the second most important competition in the county after the championship.
Speaking of the latter, we did bring in a knockout championship but that could not be sustained as unfortunately the league did not become strong enough.
For the few years it was in vogue it did bring great romance and excitement with some clubs winning their championships for the first time, for example Fethard, St. Martin’s and my own Glynn-Barntown.
Meanwhile, St. Anne’s won the double in 2000 which was a fantastic achievement but something virtually impossible to do, I feel, in a league-championship format.
I suppose the fact that the leagues have survived the last 25 years is an achievement in itself as not everyone has been fully committed to them in my view. But they certainly have not been a disaster and they did not bankrupt the clubs as the late and legendary Oliver Murray from St. Patrick’s (Ballyoughter) said they would in a letter to me in January 1995!
Some downsides are that games often do not start on time, with spectators and reporters left waiting around. Perhaps we should return to the strong action taken after the first round of the leagues in 1995 when £800 were imposed in fines for late starts!
We have also at times seen a very casual approach, with games called off or switched at very short notice without the press or the public being informed. That is unacceptable in this day and age when communications have become so important.
The local press cannot, of course, be at every game and so need reports of games to be sent to them by club PROs. Both local papers supplied report sheets for this purpose at the start of the leagues in 1995, but far from every club used them.
This is very regrettable given that the local press have always given ACL games great coverage. And they continue to do so in spite of the obstacles put in front of them.
If you take the start of the leagues in March 2020, the local ‘People’ newspaper had extensive coverage of league games that took place in the county the previous weekend.
And the three-page spread did not just include reports of Division 1 games only. There were also comprehensive reports from other divisions which is giving due recognition to the players playing in those divisions too and is to be lauded.
With such decent coverage, surely all clubs should be taking the leagues more seriously for the good of themselves and Wexford too. Talk about meaningless games (or that leagues have never worked in Wexford) isn’t helpful either as, to paraphrase a former British prime minister, a game, is a game, is a game, and none of them are meaningless.
Let’s not turn it into an existential question but let us also realise that the leagues were designed and do cater for recreational footballers too. We need to be careful that we don’t become too elitist, pumping massive amounts of money into the preparations of our county teams to the exclusion of real promotion of the games.
Given that we are also a social and cultural organisation, the leagues were meant to have a social aspect too and this was also influenced by what Dr. Jim Brosnan said back in 1994.
‘In our clubs and counties we have an appalling attitude to visitors. Friendship among players is lacking and hospitality to visiting teams is a rare event. Teams can travel up to 60 miles and back within a county and not be entertained in a great many cases.’
This was certainly not the case in the early days of the ACLs at least as many clubs offered hospitality to visiting teams, particularly those who had travelled long distances. Also I met a few players who told me that the leagues had brought them to parts of Wexford (the biggest county geographically speaking in Leinster) they had never been in before.
The All-County Leagues were brought in to provide games for players within their own county on a regular basis. This, of course, should be the basic function of any County Board.
Back in 1995, with the advent of the leagues imminent, I sent an extensive document out to the clubs. I want to quote one small paragraph from that document: ‘Clubs in Wexford are going all over the place (including outside the county) looking for matches each year. Apart from the expense involved for the club, these games should be provided for them in their own county.
‘A couple of examples of this are Faythe Harriers, who played 18 challenge and tournament games in 1994 while only playing seven competitive games in their own county. Another is Glynn-Barntown Senior footballers who played 16 challenge games while also only playing seven competitive games in their own county. This will not happen to near the same extent in the new system.’
More than a quarter of a century later, is it possible that we are about to see history repeating itself? We cannot go back there, we just cannot.
Just to reiterate one thing: Kerry have won 16 All-Irelands since they introduced their leagues, we have one just one. They don’t have to rely on under-age inter-county success (at least not up until recently) because their domestic system is so good.
We should be aiming to win a Senior All-Ireland every ten years. I think that would be a realistic aim. To do that we need well-coached players, playing in a well-organised, highly-competitive league and championship that will drive up standards and produce numerous high-quality players in hurling and football that will give us real depth when it comes to inter-county level.
That we can introduce ‘finishers’ to games as Jim Gavin was wont to call them. They have a place, but development squads are not sufficient in themselves to achieve sustained success. They can also be seen as being an elitist approach and some players are late developers.
We need to change our entire mindset towards the leagues; regression to 1994 is not an option. A major advantage this time around as we enter the second half-century of the leagues is the general availability of their inter-county players to clubs due to the incoming split season.
This was a strong bone of contention with the All-County leagues up until now, even if it did give the ordinary club player more game time when the county players were absent.
We are such a complex dual county that we need to do things in a super-efficient, model manner. With the split season coming in, we now have a glorious opportunity to develop our leagues again, making them the envy of other counties as Kerry’s have been for so long. We need to be careful about our championships format too.
Let us grasp this opportunity with both hands; otherwise, to quote Santayana, ‘those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them over and over again’.