Division Four teams meet Division One sides all the time.
But the prospect of them meeting in any kind of proposed new championship structure is always the argument of the opposition.
You couldn’t have that. You’d have too many hammerings.
Even Paraic Duffy himself, the Director General of the GAA, uses it to form a case against a World Cup-style GAA championship.
“The problem [with eight groups of four] is teams in Division Four are playing teams in Division One,” Duffy spoke with Colm Parkinson on SportsJOE’s GAA Hour podcast.
“Nobody has come up with a proposal yet that gives them more games. But they have to be games that would be of interest to the public.”
It’s probably worth reminding Duffy that his proposal does absolutely nothing to try and solve this problem (which isn’t actually a problem, not if these teams want to compete in the same competition as the big boys). In fact, Duffy’s proposal completely ignores it anyway.
It's time for a World Cup-style #GAA championship and here's how it would look, writes @ConanDoherty https://t.co/rGShxBmByi
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) July 25, 2016
Paraic Duffy’s idea will be put before congress but all it does is reshape the quarter-finals into two groups of four. But the last eight was never the problem. People whinged about May through July trying to get to this stage of the competition, crying out for competitive games, complaining about mismatches.
All Duffy is doing is playing around with the best eight teams in the country, just for fun. It would make for entertaining viewing, sure, but it wouldn’t do anything for the May, June and July problem.
It doesn’t even attempt to address the fact that six times in this campaign, next season’s Division Four sides have faced a Division One side.
Roscommon played New York.
Roscommon played Leitrim.
Mayo played London.
Dublin played Westmeath.
Cavan played Carlow.
Mayo played Westmeath.
And that’s absolutely fine as well. If you’re going to have an All-Ireland competition, you have to be prepared for some foregone conclusions. Every sport that considers itself far-reaching and wants a tournament to decipher the best of the best puts up with it.
The first week of a tennis grand slam might as well be a procession. The best players are seeded and more often than not they walk through the first four rounds against lower-ranked opponents and the real action doesn’t usually get going until they start meeting each other.
Euro 2016 was seeded. The Champions League throws up so many mismatches that people only start tuning in for the second round.
The Rugby World Cup is a joke. The shock that was caused in 2015 when three decent teams – Wales, England and Australia – were put into the same group – summed up the generally pointless nature of the early rounds of that tournament.
You can’t have every team competing for the top prize every year – it doesn’t work like that. But you can at the very least make the competition fairer.
A World Cup-style championship structure would look like this.
This was all explained here before.
Rather than having 12 teams in one province looking to get to the quarters whilst six teams do the same in another province, this round robin format would address the imbalance and it’d be genuinely appetising.
Splitting the championship doesn’t make sense. Not when you have Division Three Tipperary in the semi-final. Not when you have Longford beating top tier Monaghan and Down. Not when you want an All-Ireland competition.
You could split it though as the tournament progresses.
If you finish top two, you advance to the second round of the senior championship.
If you finish bottom two, you advance to the second round of the intermediate championship.
So there you have it, Paraic. A proposal that gives Division Four teams more games. A proposal that provides games of interest to the public.
A proposal that deals with the provincial inequality and one which directly addresses the early championship season apathy. Even a proposal that gives everyone aspiration of success but still allows them their fair shot at the big time.
But I have a feeling that this patronising of weaker counties is nothing more than an excuse.
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