I agree with you that the Tommy Murphy cup was a complete and utter disaster for the most part. It actually deprived Mick O’ Dwyer’s Wicklow a run at the qualifiers in 2007 and 2008 before they finally reneged in 2009 and allowed division 4 teams who didn’t reach the provincial finals to play in the qualifiers again. Low and behold Wicklow reach the 4th round of the qualifiers the very next year in their greatest run in championship ever. The Tailteann cup won’t work but maybe the senior, intermediate and junior system which works well in club set-ups. The occasional meteoric rise of a team from junior to senior success in a short period of time like Gorey or Ratoath are great stories. An intermediate final is a huge occasion at club level anyway.
A very pertinent point that you made about the change of the league system in 2008. It seemed very good at the time but there has been a noticeable gulf in the championship since 1A, 1B, 2A and 2B with A and B being equals changed to divs 1-4. Teams like Wexford and Limerick thrived on the old system just before the change.
Kerry being a long way from Clones is obviously a big reason, but a lot of counties are a long way from each other, so you will have a lot of matches like that where away support is minimal. But I would venture that very few Ulster based neutrals turned up either, whereas for an Ulster semi-final they might, and they certainly would for an Ulster final. Ulster semi-finals and finals are part of a tradition going back 130 years. That Monaghan-Kerry Super 8 match was in effect an All-Ireland quarter-final, so 17k is not much. It was also part of a new round robin phase which lacked history. It lacked previous reference points. There’s a reason people talk about Munster final day and Ulster final day. You’re not just there for a competitive match, you’re living out history and tradition and carrying it on. Local rivalries are a far better thing to base a championship on than matches between teams from the opposite ends of the country.
If hope and competitiveness has nothing to do with crowds going to matches, why do Mayo attract such consistently massive support? Why did Kildare and Laois attract such massive support when Mick O’Dwyer came on board? Armagh in the late 1990s/early 2000s? Clare packed out Cusack Park for a Munster football tie against Cork in 1993, it was shown on live TV when live TV was rare. It was an event. Clare were the Munster champions and that created a massive buzz.
Why did Dublin’s matches in Leinster fall off a cliff in terms of crowds from about about 2012/13? And not just opposition support, Dublin support stopped turning up in numbers. Because there was no promise of competitive football. Whereas in the 2000s, Dublin supporters came out like never before to support what was a much inferior team. Because they knew the matches would be close.
Cork v Kerry crowds fell off a cliff in recent years because Cork stopped competing. But when there’s a promise of Cork being competitive against Kerry, the crowds always return, especially in Killarney. It’s a ritual.
A lot of those type of counties thrived under that system.
Sligo reached an All-Ireland quarter-final in 2002 and they should have dumped out Armagh. They won Connacht in 2007 and even as late as 2010 were still very competitive. They have fallen away badly since then.
Fermanagh reached an All-Ireland quarter-final in 2003 and a semi-final in 2004, only losing by two points in a replay. They came as close to winning Ulster as they ever will in 2008.
Laois won Leinster in 2003.
Monaghan rose again after 15 years in the doldrums and thankfully for them have managed to retain their place in the upper tiers of the game.
Westmeath won Leinster.
And as you say, Limerick being consistently competitive, Wexford reaching a League final and an All-Ireland semi-final, and Wicklow punching above their weight. Longford were always good for a shock in the qualifiers. Antrim raised a decent gallop in 2009.
The system allowed that sort of stuff to happen.
But in the 2010s it was almost unheard of as the wealth concentrated at the top. The element of chaos created by the pandemic and the return to championship knockout in 2020 enabled those Cavan and Tipp shocks. And it may well have enabled Dublin’s dethroning in 2021.
We didn’t know it at the time but the 00’s were actually a golden period for competitiveness in the football championship. In the mid 00’s you’d have 6 or 7 counties with genuine ambitions of winning Leinster. Tyrone as reigning AI champions needed a replay to beat Louth before losing to Laois and Kerry almost came unstuck against Sligo and Antrim in the 2009 qualifiers.
1A and 1B were the same standard. Like with the current 1A and 1B in hurling. They just divided the top 16 teams as evenly as possible. 2A and 2B were also equal and weren’t based on any results just a random placing for each tier other than those promoted and relegated. If you win division 2B you went up to 1B.
That’s right. Mid or lower ranking counties could usually have genuine hope of being very competitive or even beating top teams. Remember Dublin only beat Longford by 2 points in Longford in 2006 and Wexford by 2 in Carlow in 2002. And those were lower ranked counties. That is the sort of situation the GAA needs to be aiming to get back to. Instead they seem to want to go further and further away from it.
When Dublin played Mayo in those semi-finals in 2015 Ger Gilroy said something that I thought betrayed a total lack of understanding. He sort of angrily exclaimed after the replay “why can’t we have more of these sort of matches”? You can’t have more of those sort of matches by definition, because they are All-Ireland semi-finals. They only come around once a year, or in that case twice with the replay. They only come around when everything is on the line. Their specialness is in their scarcity. And you can’t fake them by staging them every week. And if you do that, you’ll actually kill their special nature when it does come around to All-Ireland semis and finals, because we’ll have had the same teams playing each other over and over again. Crowds will not turn up in numbers week after week in April and early May, which will diminish the feeling of importance around the competition.
There are two teams the Proposal B league format for the championship would favour. One is Kerry. The other, and the team it would by far suit the most, is Dublin.
It would not suit Mayo, because Mayo are a team that plays on emotion and has probably half their team based outside the county. And Mayo have been the one team which has kept the football championship interesting for the last decade. If they decline, and nobody replaces them, Gaelic football would be in a bad, bad place.
Just something that crossed my mind in terms of structure and whatnot from a discussion elsewhere.
Surely with the split season it would make more sense to split the I/C season between the two codes. Intercounty Hurling Championship from May bank holiday weekend to early/mid July. All Ireland football championship from end of July to mid October.
Do the same for club championships but in the inverse. Club football championships from mid April to early end of June. Club Hurling Championship from July to October.
Would make it a lot easier on dual clubs. For it to work intercounty hurlers couldn’t play club football until county eliminated and vise versa. Slightly tough on those players and their clubs but that a fairly small sub section players in the adult club championship.
Very hard to work in somewhere like Wexford, current hurling champions were last year’s football winners, they would have inter-county players in both codes, lot of teams in similar situation
That’s one of the big problems. Another is that championship finishing in June means some lads will be finished their year in May - you might say they can still play league games but we all know what it’s like trying to get lads to play league when they have been knocked out of championship. Your suggestion could be as good as any, but no matter what you go with it has problems.
You would need to do it in the window after mid October alright. While not ideal I doubt a well run side who are capable of winning a county title would mind.
International windows work well in association football. I don’t know why you couldn’t have designated club windows during the inter-county championship seasons. Each club window could last for two weeks. It would have to be compulsory. And that has bene the problem with club windows up to now. Everything has been optional and delegated to the individual county.
I generally agree with you on most subjects but I think this is pie in the sky thinking.
No Inter County football manager will agree to two-three weeks prep after their club championships conclude until their first round of the Inter County Championship.
Do you play an Inter County National League in Feb/March, then break for 10 weeks for Club, and back again for championship?
Also, for many clubs, an Inter County Footballer, might still be their best club hurler so to have to play without them would be a non runner.
I’d be happy enough for the Inter County Season to run right through from February to August, with Club Championships starting the same time they started this year i.e. mid August running to first week of November. Provincial Club in November & December, and the AI Club in Late January/Early Feb.
29 football clubs in Monaghan. Sligo suffers a little from having 33% of the population in the town itself, and I’d say the population is older than most counties too. Tyrone probably have twice the number of clubs, with probably twice the population who would be of the GAA persuasion?