Does it really matter if Dublin are beating teams in Leinster or in Connacht or in Ulster?
There’s nothing more unfulfilling than a one-sided contest and, unfortunately, it happens too often in Gaelic Football. What’s worse is that there’s not a whole lot you can do to really address the issue properly.
Split the championship in two and you’d still have teams in the A grade brushing each other aside with boring ease. Like Monaghan did with Down. Like Tyrone did with Derry. Like Mayo and Kildare and so on and so on (from this season alone).
The only way to split the championship in the search for competitive fixtures every week would be to divide it in two: have five in the A championship and 28 in the B championship. Even then, the B division would throw up some horrible damp squibs anyway.
The way it is nowadays, lads cry during competitive games that go the whole way to injury time because teams are playing too defensively for their liking. Then a side like Westmeath even hints at opening up against a team like Dublin and it’s game over in 90 flat seconds.
Colm, Pat, Joe, no-one cares if you're enjoying it or not https://t.co/pNqSaFff02
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) July 17, 2016
So this “Champions League format” that they refer to – as if a round robin had never been used before the invention of the Champions League – is the next on the agenda and, sure, it might add a bit of freshness and novelty to the whole thing. But how is throwing Carlow and Waterford and London and the likes into groups of four, with three higher-ranked teams than them, really going to help?
If a round robin was implemented this season, Leitrim could’ve been grouped with Galway, Tyrone, and Kerry.
Dublin could’ve been thrown in with Armagh, Westmeath, and London. No-one is getting to the bottom of anything then.
If you mix up the provinces, you’d still have out-and-out stronger sides and you’d get some competitive clashes – like we have now anyway. You’d still be relying on Dublin facing off with Mayo or Kerry or Tyrone or Donegal to really be sure of one of the big teams getting tested early on. But then what happens? The rest of the championship is an even bigger formality because better teams fall by the wayside quicker?
Again, this is a universal problem not just applicable to football.
The Champions League – the format we’re holding up so dearly – never gets going until the knockout stages. Tennis grand slams generally aren’t interesting until the second week and let’s not even get started on the Rugby World Cup.
If you want to include every team, you’re going to have mismatches.
The only alternative is to start chopping the championship four and five ways and prioritise the league but you’d be doing well to convince inter-county players to train every night of the week for a Division Four championship.
Dublin’s dominance is worrying, but it’s not going away. And Westmeath manager Tom Cribben had a few reality check words for people who were hoping it might.
“They’re doing too much good work at underage,” he said. “They have super coaching structures in place. They have structures in place and they’ve learned now. They’ll only get better.
“The rest are going to have to get up to them, they’re not going back. People are coddling themselves thinking this team is going to fall away in a year or two or three. They’re coddling themselves. Everyone else is going to have to get up to Dublin’s standard.
“It’s not all about money like everyone says. You have to coach at underage. Look at Kildare, that’s three Leinsters in four years at minor level and that’s where you have to start the work. They are doing the work at underage and everybody knows that. This isn’t rocket science. You have to bring them up winning at underage and carry it the whole way through.
“Dublin won’t come back. They’ll only get better.”
Putting them into a different type of provincial championship will do damn all to stop them. As Cribben says, everyone else is just going to have to get better.
