The facts presented by Paul Keane in today’s Times are telling: only three times out of 20 did a beaten provincial finalist win their qualifier if it was played the next weekend.
This is more evidence that the GAA’s championship structures are not just dysfunctional, but unfair.
This six-day turnaround has been largely eliminated, but as ever the change comes too slowly. It’s like a Hollywood celebrity doing their bit for the environment by driving an electric car to the runway where their private jet is revving up.
Our condition needs a shift of mindset rather than a tweak here or there.
The way the best hurling and football team of the year is decided is bizarre — you only realise how strange when trying to explain it to somebody unfamiliar with Gaelic games. The inter-county season begins in January and finishes in September, and you can be champions having played half a dozen games — or sometimes less.
Advertisement
The debate over championship structures is a long-running one, there have been loads of excellent alternatives put forwards by Jim McGuinness, among others. Colm Parkinson too has been consistently flogging this, unfortunately, still live horse. The subject has been covered well from almost every angle, so I’m loathe to jump in yet having first advanced the following idea nearly ten years ago I feel I can repeat myself. As I see it, the solution is far too straightforward to implement.
Brian Clough, almost 40 years ago, was asked by John Motson what his priority was for the season.
“The Football League,” he said. “Always has been and always will be. I would gladly go out of the European Cup, the Football League Cup, and the FA Cup tomorrow if you could guarantee me winning the football league.”
Asked why, Clough said: “Because that is the one where you have to have every aspect of football management about you to win it. You’ve got to have endurance, you’ve got to have talent, you’ve got to be a little bit daft, you’ve got to have strength, psychology, you name it . . . it’s a real endurance battle over nine or ten months.” He added, modestly, that you had to have good players too.
It’s unlikely Clough thought much about the GAA calendar during his life, but if he did he would have been aghast. His words come to mind when considering the GAA’s inter-county championships.
Advertisement
Enda McEvoy yesterday wrote a story of how Eamonn O’Shea, an economist and former Tipperary manager, once told journalists not to read much into the first couple games of the season because it was “too small a sample size”.
Of course O’Shea was right. But then the entire championship is too small a sample size. If you’re a soccer fan you will likely have read convincing pieces in the past few months about how a 38-game season is an inadequate sample size. Tottenham Hotspur, they argued, are England’s best side having proved it over the past two years and 76 league games. I think that stretches the point. Two years is too much. 76 games is too much. Six games, though, is way too little.
So, what to do?
The only change you need to make to the championship is to bring it back to the way it was: no back door, no qualifiers, no compromise. It’s a knockout competition and giving most teams a second chance denies its integrity. Next you give the league, which has been the most enjoyable competition in recent years, the respect it warrants. Teams should play each other twice so you have 14 games instead of seven. There ought to be no league final or semi-final because, similar to back doors, these games deny a league its integrity. The team with the greatest number of points or, if necessary, scoring difference wins. And that’s it.
So how do we make way for all of these extra games in the middle of a crowded fixture list? You just play the championship and league concurrently. You could start the league in late April and wrap it up in August, plenty of time to play 14 games as well as between one and five championship matches.
Advertisement
As well as giving high-quality games week after week, this system would shorten the inter-county season allowing the rest of the year for club games — or for county players to travel, socialise, focusing on their education or job; the things most young men do when they’re not training four nights a week for a big 70 minutes five months away.
The provincial and All-Ireland finals would maintain their places in the calendar and in the hearts of the public under this change. Yet, in time, I think the league would assume its just place among supporters and players as the most accurate gauge of the country’s best team.
As Clough said, it’s a battle of endurance, talent and the ability to be “a little bit daft”.
What’s plainly daft is continuing to give top billing to a stop-start knockout competition while a far truer championship is overdue a promotion.