Let’s just start the championship in the last week of August, shall we?
We’ll have Donegal play Kerry and Dublin play Mayo. The winners advance to the final.
That’s what everyone wants, right? We’re fed up with the rest of the nonsense.
But what about the Ulster champions? Okay, we’ll bring in Monaghan, too. They can play Mayo instead, the winners advance to a playoff. The winner of the playoff advances to the final where Dublin will wait. We’re all sick of seeing them winning after all so just throw them into the bloody decider already and be done with it.
What do you want?
Here we are, three months into the championship and we’re still being told that the current format is not right. We’re still whinging about splitting the thing in two.
Let’s pretend for a second that we’re not at the quarter final stage. Let’s pretend that we’re not at the last eight of the competition this weekend and that whittling the championship down to 16 actually would matter. And that it would have an effect.
Who do you include in the top tier of 16?
Division One and Two?
From this year? Westmeath. Kildare. Two teams who took hammerings from Dublin and sparked fury amongst the viewing public. Split the championship in two and you’d have those two teams in the top tier anyway based on this year’s league. Both also went on to record some huge victories en route to the last 12 and last eight respectively but did you see Kildare’s display against Kerry? They don’t deserve to be in the A Championship. Something has to be done.
So we’ll split the championship based on next year’s top two divisions.
That means Fermanagh.
And that also means Down – the side who were put out by Wexford.
It means Laois, the side hammered by Kildare, eliminated by Antrim.
Meath, beaten by Westmeath. Roscommon, beaten by Fermanagh.
Now, we’re going to stop pretending that we haven’t already reached the quarter final stage and we’re still complaining about drubbings.
These are the last eight teams left in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. On merit. If it’s not competitive now – with eight teams – how on earth would splitting the championship and dividing it into an elite section of 16 make one blind bit of difference?
I used to believe in this idea.
I even sampled a proposed format that wasn’t just based on league form.
But, look. You still have Kerry playing Kildare. You have Cavan perhaps – in hindsight – unfairly in a higher grade and even Tipperary are rubbing shoulders with the big boys in what initially would’ve looked like a group of death.
That’s before Cork took a pelting themselves and Tyrone got relegated. Before Tyrone handed Tipp their arses as well.
Then I spoke with Ryan McCluskey of Fermanagh. 11 years he waited to get back to an All-Ireland quarter final. He wouldn’t change it.
Brian Darby of Offaly – he wouldn’t change it. They’re training as much as anyone, their counties have traditions and history. They don’t want to be patronised with a second tier afterthought that has already been trialed half-heartedly before.
These are the best club players in the land. The best want to be tested against the best.
Perhaps the championship structure could do with being freshened up though, fair enough. Perhaps groups would excite the imagination, reinvigorate the format. It would completely devalue the provincial series, but maybe it is worth looking at. Every side would have three games at least and everyone would get a crack at one of the so-called big boys (except the big boys don’t stretch as far as eight).
Why not try it though? A World Cup-style, 33-team, 8-group competition.
But if we’re calling for the whole championship to be divided because teams took heavy beatings, then we really are starting a new age of trial by social media.
Should we really change the whole championship because Sligo – the same team who beat Division One Roscommon – were hammered by Mayo (they’d still play in a provincial competition anyway that would never be let go of)?
Should we really change the whole thing because Kildare – the same team who beat Division One Cork – got thumped in the quarters?
If fans really find it so hard to watch one team beating another team by a lot of points, why do some of them then boo when a side sets up defensively and plays with more caution?
If fans really find it unacceptable that some of the margins are too high, what is the solution? Because if we’re complaining about the level of competition at the quarter final stage, what could we really be talking about other than splitting the championship three or four ways? Or just having four or five teams in the top tier and a free-for-all in the intermediate or junior or Tommy Murphy championship?
Good teams come and go, it works in cycles. Counties can’t be competitive forever. Heck, only five years ago, you couldn’t get a word in edge ways in Ulster between Armagh and Tyrone, for over a decade. Now they’re both firmly in the second bracket up north.
Maybe the structure could do with being freshened up but if anyone thinks for a second that cutting loose 17 teams would really have a positive effect on the future of football, they’re kidding themselves.
Getting promoted into the senior championship isn’t an incentive. You’d have four teams – five tops – with realistic aspirations of winning the second tier format. You’d end up with a top tier, a batch of yo-yo teams and maybe a dozen or more counties fallen by the wayside into nothing but pointless apathy.
You haven’t given them a better shot of winning anything. You’ve taken away their big day. You’ve taken away the interest around the place, the desire for young footballers to grow up and rub shoulders with the best. They could even lose big sponsors, TV interest and crowds would go down because there’d be even more nothing clashes and a general feeling of who really gives a toss.
Summer trips to America would become even more frequent, bus loads of kids would no longer be journeyed down the road for the big day, and those cast aside would find that it is a very, very long way back from the scrap heap.
Almost hurling proportions.
More fans travelled from Fermanagh on Sunday for the clash with the mighty Dublin in a quarter final than ever would have made the trip for a B final. And they knew they had virtually no hope. Yet today’s showing, their relentless spirit to keep punching back when it would’ve been so easy to just roll over, and the ovation they got afterwards from the Erne supporters will do so much more for the county and for the kids in the stands than a shot at second tier would have.
And, to top it all off, a split still wouldn’t be solving the knee jerk reaction that started this whole plight in the first place. You’d still have teams from seven and eight, the whole way down to 16th ranked, taking big beatings from the Dublins and Kerrys of this world.
Why? Because they have better teams right now. That’s what happens.
Monaghan have one of the smallest populations in the land and they’re doing quite alright for themselves. It’s just up to the rest of the country to do the bloody work and catch up.
Otherwise, we’ll just continue to cut until we really do end up with a four-team top-tier championship. Then, sure, if we really are that fed up with it all, we can just propose to abandon the 29-team championship as well – we’ll run the A grade over two weeks and then we can all get on with our lives.
Is that what we want? Sometimes, that’s what it sounds like.
