See, you have to understand the process by which the provincial championships and the championship as a whole dumbed down.
I go back to the analogy of how the Tories run down the NHS and the BBC piece by piece to create the impression these things are no longer worth saving.
The first piece of running down the provincial championships was that they were no longer knockout. But we at least understand the reasons for that decision, and the provincial championships could still function as excellent competitions if they were competitive.
The first real piece of the running down of the provincial championships and thus the championships as a whole was the decision to scrap the 1A/1B/2A/2B League structure that gave weaker counties the platform to get used to a good level of football while not letting the stronger counties gallop away. The League doesnât really matter that much, but it can serve as a good competition to allow teams to be competitive come championship. Now itâs the major driver of grotesque imbalances in standards which make the championship shit.
The expansion of substitutes from three to five and then six, that favours the stronger counties and fucks the weaker counties, because squads become all important and for obvious reasons itâs more difficult for the weaker counties to have strong squads.
The condensing of the season mitigates against competition because thereâs less recovery time.
With every defeat, disillusion grows among the teams who tend to lose more. The gaps grow wider. The symptoms are tackled, not the causes. The solution offered is to essentially banish the weaker counties, not to create a situation where they can compete.
When you are not competing, nobody sees any point. We canât compete becomes, whatâs the point in playing, becomes. thereâs no point in attending. The whole thing becomes a interminably boring procession. The value of the competition is diminished. The proposed solution, the Tyler Morton Cup, is a dead duck.
The misguided or worse, underhand elitism dressed as âprogressâ becomes the death of a sport.