Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CAREW FOR THE ‘SHIP Niall feels League should always take a back seat for counties
CARLOW manager Niall Carew says the Championship trumps the League every time for him.
Carew has challenged the assertion that the League is the most important competition for the majority of football counties.
The GAA last week said that the supposed preeminence of the League over the Championship for the bulk of counties formed the reasoning for pressing ahead with the competition this year, despite months of the fixture calendar being lost due to Covid-19 restrictions.
While satisfied that the League is part of the schedule as he bids to break Carlow out of Division Four in his first full campaign in charge, Carew countered: “You want to get up the divisions, absolutely, and I agree with that but would I swap getting to a Leinster final to get out of Division Four?
“I’d say, no, get to a Leinster final.
“I think playing big Championship games are way ahead of the League.
“A big Championship win, if you were in a lower division and you beat one of the so-called big guns, they’re memories that no one can take from you so I don’t think that it (the League) is the only show in town.
“We’re all on different journeys but to get momentum or to get to the last eight, if there was a back door system again, we can’t lose sight of that.
“If Carlow don’t do well in the League this year, does that mean that we’re not going to bother turning up for training on Tuesday night for the Championship the following day?
“The answer is no, we’ll try and redeem ourselves and get back up on the horse and try and get your season to be a successful one and if that’s to get to a Leinster final, brilliant. That’s a brilliant season. But I would always say that it’s all about the Championship still.”
Carlow will return to training on Tuesday night, by which time they will know their fate in the Leinster Championship with the preliminary round and quarter-final draws being made that morning.
Carew (below) questions why the Leinster Council persists with a long-running seeding system which sees the previous year’s semifinalists given a bye to the quarter-finals and feels the format should be shaken up given Dublin’s recordbreaking dominance.
“The provincials should have been knocked on the head this year and it should be an open draw for the Allireland.
“They missed a trick there though because there would’ve been exciting games if you’d Derry playing Kerry playing in the first round, you know what I mean? I think it’s dead in the water, the
provincial.”