The Ulster championship alone had four top quality games this year.
Tyrone v Monaghan
Tyrone v Donegal
Monaghan v Armagh
Donegal v Derry
These are the games that make the summer.
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Theyll still be played in spring. The league had loads of good games too and now they’ll have the added edge of being part of the championship
They won’t. Because that’s the McKenna Cup.
Can someone tell me the likely make up of quarter finalists in Proposal B?
A Division 3 & 4 team will be there, so in all likelihood there’ll be a few pastings on the biggest weekend of the year?
No it will still be the Ulster championship with all its edge and history. It might even be more competitive in that it will be stand alone. No heading into the qualifiers to give you solace. Youve just been knocked the fuck out.
Of the 24 Super 8 matches played in 2018 and 2019, how many were in any way memorable?
You must believe in the tooth fairy if you believe that.
Sure that goes for the entire championship. A similar percentage id imagine
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It’s an utter joke that a div 2/3/4 teams gets in there ahead of a Div 1 team.
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The point is, grand promises are being made about how we’re going to get all these memorable matches in a new league format.
But we’ve already had a league format between the top eight teams in the country. It was the Super 8s. And it was shit.
I make it that four of the 24 Super 8 matches were in any way memorable or had a real championship feel about them.
What the Super 8s did produce was a ton of very forgettable, predictable football.
Is it 2nd in div 2 plays div 3 winners and 3rd plays div 4 winners?
Those two then join the top 5 in div one and the einner of div 2. It’s a bit mad but will make division 1 very competitive. Some dog fight for the top 5. Imagine paddy small raising his hand for a mark readying himself to kick the point that knocks kerry out of the championship on score difference. In a sweltering semple stadium.
Based on the NFL divisions for 2022, likely qualifiers for the knockout stages would be as follows;
Division 1
1 Dublin
2 Kerry
3 Tyrone
4 Mayo
5 Donegal
Division 2
6 Galway
7 Meath
8 Derry
Division 3
9 Westmeath
Division 4
10 Cavan
Teams 1-6 would qualify for the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
You’d have two knockout ties to determine the final two quarter-finalists.
7 Meath v 10 Cavan
8 Derry v 9 Westmeath
The quarter-finals would likely line up something like this:
1 Dublin v 8 Derry
2 Kerry v 7 Meath
3 Tyrone v 6 Galway
4 Mayo v 5 Donegal
Semis
Dublin v Mayo
Kerry v Tyrone
Only knock-out games really get anyone’s pulses raising in any sport these days.
This system could allow a team in Division 1 lose about 4 games and still win an All Ireland which is kind of a joke.
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There’s a huge lack of jeopardy in it.
The timing of it is disastrous too. I make it that the likely dates for the league phase would be: April 3rd, April 10th, April 17th, April 24th, May 8th, May 15th, May 22nd.
Sure you can get the odd nice day in April but it’s often extremely cold and the prevailing weather, at that time of year, particularly in the early stages, is not suited to attracting large crowds.
Plus there are serious competing counter attractions in wider sport.
Like I mean look at the sort of crowds that have turned up to NFL semi-finals and finals in April over the last decade, most involving Dublin. Apart from the 2016 NFL final which had the gimmick of the 1916 show to attract a big crowd, the crowds at these matches have been very poor as a rule.
That looks class. On the back of a summer of really competitive games as teams battle for those spots. They would really have been well earned.
The whole reason for these changes is to create competitive matches for teams who are not in the top 8
the current system is a disaster for the likes of Wexford
the real solution is probably two/three divisions for the championship, but they wont go far that…
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I’ve outlined a perfect system here.
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Not bad but would the teams who won their provincial bother their barney then in the league stage.
The ‘jim mcguinness’ one is the best I’ve seen
The league stage is before provincials.
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The new system will do nothing at all for Wexford. If you’re in Division 4 and you lose your first two matches, the likely outcome is you throw your hat at it.
It’s creating a massive structural barrier to Wexford ever returning to anything like the standard they were at in the 2005-2011 period.
The strong counties get stronger because they have a diet of football against the other strong counties, the weak get weaker because they only have a diet of football against the other weak counties.
All that awaits the winner of Division 4 is a likely tanking in the knockout round.
It exacerbates the problems that have been caused by the 2008-present league format.
I keep going back to this point: the problem is the lack of competitiveness. Instead of addressing the reasons for that lack of competitiveness, Proposal B accepts lack of competitiveness as a fait accompli. It enshrines lack of competitiveness as a desirable thing, and caters only to the elite.
It says to the likes of Wexford: “know your place”. And Wexford’s place is to be mired in Division 4 or at best Division 3, pretty much forever.
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