Thereâs only so many weeks in a year. We canât fit everything into one calendar. The league this year was seriously tame stuff now with the round robin I just donât see the point of it.
Iâd have much worries for the club playerâs development when their season comes down to four games in a short eriod and for a large part of the year itâs impossible to get numbers at training for any number of reasons.
I just cannot see how a league plus (round robin-centred) provincial championships plus an All Ireland series is anywhere near optimum structure.
I think new players could be blooded in the eight games played on a home and away basis. There would be a transitional phrase for a couple of years but bedding in tyros in this fashion would quickly enough become the norm and more or less frictionless?
I think the league or some form of a secondary competition will be needed, especially given the S&C standard needed. Realistically, the majority of lads coming out of under 20s will need a couple of years ti bridge the gap and something is needed to blood these players in to let them grow and develop.
A league in the early part of the year will get more but in than a secondary competition like the old intermediate championship, a development/B/under 23s competition.
But do you really think hurling in January should exist except in Fitzgibbon and Schools and a few other small areas?
Itâs simply unfair December and January are inter county months.
We are already delaying the club championship for months for less than one percent of players who play inter county championship into July.
February is plenty of time for inter county training.
In a perfect world probably not, but given the handful of competitive sides at LM level it makes it hard to come up with any kind of structure which is fair and equal
Well, definitely you are making fair comment there. But I do think, however naively, we could put in place structures that are more fair and more equal. The two facets go hand in hand.
Anyway, thanks for taking me up on what is a huge issue â the issue, really â for the GAA, because it effects all members.
I donât have a problem with it but can understand why people have an issue with a league format followed by another.
However I donât see how a single competition would work.
If you have two groups of five you would presumably prefer to have MSHC levels of competitiveness. In that scenario it would be a brave manager that would risk two points by throwing in a few young fellas.
If you end up with LSHC levels of competitiveness in the groups the whole thing would be fairly boring.
Not your angle, but some of the voices looking to squeeze the number of inter county matches are also those bemoaning the lack of television/media coverage. Whatever about a casual viewer looking at NHL on TV, the reality is that most of those casual viewers donât bother too much with club matches until maybe provincial championships at a push.
Thereâs too much focus on âfairnessâ. League is for fairness and guaranteed games. Championship was never supposed to be fair.
Like, which is a fairer competition, the Laois SFC with (I think) round robin groups of 8 or the Tyrone SFC with its straight knock out format?
Which is more exciting? Easy answer.
Jeopardy has to be integral to any championship format. Without jeopardy, the spectators donât come. In hurling now weâre already at the limit of that balance between fairness (guaranteed games) and jeopardy. That balance canât be pushed any further.
Abolishing the League would be a very bad move. Itâs where you get the majority of your guaranteed games and the chance to blood players.
The NHL format, as long as this current provincial round robin system persists, should be simple.
Two equal groupings of six teams, so five guaranteed fixtures. The winners of each group contest the final.
Your dates are February 12th, 19th, 26th, March 12th, 19th, 26th. Championship starts April 16th.
Okay, thanks. Some excellent remarks there.
â I was not really arguing for a single competition. I was arguing for an eight tie round robin that would replace the league (and the provincial championships, in a sense), followed by an All Ireland series. The two competitions would be linked but distinct.
â One of my core points centres on locating a means of eliminating the âMSHC levels of competitivenessâ/âLSHC levels of competitivenessâ axis. This axis is unhelpful, putting the matter mildly, and a distraction.
â I really do not think the GAA should pay any heed, when seeking to optimize its structures, to the perspective of âcasual viewersâ. For all the obvious reasons and for the sovereign reason that the person guiding a discussion cannot be the least attentive person in the room.
You are conflating two senses of âfairnessâ there: âfairnessâ in the sense of starting from the same line (âfairnessâ as all competitors inhabiting the exact same structure at outset) and âfairnessâ as the acceptance that there will be an ultimate winner (âfairnessâ as the chance to win or lose on a given day). The first sense of âfairnessâ is âstructureâ; the second sense of âfairnessâ is âopportunityâ. The two senses are obviously related but remain distinct in implication.
Main problem? That the Munster/Tipperary supremacists claim the first sense of âfairnessâ abrades the second sense of âfairnessâ. Moving away from a province-centred structure is the only way of removing this factor.
What I meant is that a new structure should be such that as many matches as possible count for something, which would mean managers would not be able to take very many chances in selection, rather than a Leinster v Munster thing. (I am completely against getting rid of the MSHC though.)
Agree on your final point.
Casual viewers are a knock on effect of attracting a core market. A core market is not your die hards who will go whatever the format, whatever the weather - the people who attend every league game, who go to Walsh Cup/Waterford Crystal/McKenna Cup/OâByrne Cup. There are very few of them. The core market is much bigger.
Your core market is the people you can attract to non-All-Ireland final games. The 30k who turned up to Limerick v Clare in the round robin are all part of your core market. So are the 42k who turned up to Limerick v Clare in the Munster final. So are the 48k or whatever who went to Kilkenny v Clare. Some of the 82k at the final wonât be your core market but thatâs unavoidable given the corporate environment we live in.
The more you can tap of that core market, the wider the interest overall, the wider the television interest. What excites the casual viewer is also certain to attract the core market. Big crowds are in and of themselves a massive marketing tool that make people want to watch games. When a casual viewer saw the basic spectacle of Limerick v Cork as an occasion this year, a full stadium on a sunny day, theyâd be inclined to watch. They would not have been inclined to watch Tipperary v Waterford because the stadium looked largely empty. But the certainty, whatever the format is: the less empty spaces at stadiums, the more attractive the championship, and the better for hurling, or for Gaelic football. Nothing drives apathy like empty spaces at stadiums. And an integral function of the championship format is, or should be, to get crowds as big as possible but also minimise empty spaces.
In the GAA, because of its deeply idiosyncratic structures and traditions and also because of Irelandâs small population, that balance between jeopardy and maximising the amount of games where you can attract big crowds is a very subtle and tricky one to strike and itâs one the GAA hasnât yet mastered and probably never will master. The All-Ireland quarter-finals and semi-finals in hurling tend to be inferior spectacles to a lot of the Munster games.
If you have a bloated format with too many round robin games and not enough jeopardy, less people will attend. Lots of empty spaces diminishes the attractiveness of a championship and breeds dissatisfaction and apathy.
All of this is basic psychology.
All of this has to be considered.
Good and interesting points about relationship between âcasual viewersâ and âcore audienceâ. We probably do not think enough about these matters. And I like the use of the term âjeopardyâ. Worth transferring to sportâs dynamics, I agree.
But my suggestion was aimed, successfully or not, at the current âbloated formatâ. There are too many intercounty games at the moment.
The All-Ireland quarter-finals and semi-finals in hurling tend to be inferior spectacles to a lot of the Munster games: depends on how you define âspectacleâ but largely I agree. Again, my suggestion was aimed at addressing the structural imbalance at provincial level that tends to foster this eventuality.
Fairness and the GAA have never really been bedfellows. This is down to the idiosyncratic systems which grew up from the beginning of the organisation - the varying sizes of counties, the varying population densities and thus varying levels of out migration, varying sizes of provinces, varying levels of participation and popularity for each sport in particular areas. You have idiosyncrasies such as Kerry, the most fanatical football county, also being the only true football county in the southern half of the country.
Because of the wildly varying levels of population and resources between counties and provinces, what constitutes âfairnessâ is moot. âFairnessâ as in everybody starting from the same point of a competition is fair in one sense, but also by necessity demolishes cherished traditions of 130 years. And people donât like cherished traditions of 130 years suddenly ceasing to exist. They will fight against that.
More guaranteed games for each team is fair in another sense, in that you no longer have the situation where half the teams train all that time for just one game, but it increases predictability, because the more guaranteed games for everybody, the more chances everybody gets, the more that plays into the hands of the teams with the resources and the more predictable a competition becomes.
When the back door in football came in, there was a common complaint where teams that had lost in the first round in the provinces would lose players for the qualifiers, players just werenât bothered, theyâd go back to their clubs or up and leave for America, they didnât want to lose twice, the whole thing felt hollow. For some anyway. That was a problem. In a round robin, a team can throw the towel in quickly. Weâve seen it with Waterford several times. Players become discouraged by successive losses and supporters twig this and thus support completely evaporates.
Sporting competition thrives on unpredictability. Sure youâve a much greater chance now that the winner of the All-Ireland truly is the best team in the country - but I donât necessarily think thatâs a good thing. 130 years of tradition has socialised GAA players and supporters into the hope of the shock. Thatâs now pretty much gone and I think a lot has gone with it.
The unique selling point of the championships is in another sense its problem. Tradition.
The Munster hurling championship and the Ulster football championship are the two provincial championships which unquestionably work. The other four have gone through good periods and bad periods. Connacht football tips away, itâs passable. Leinster football used to be a box office championship but no longer. However, the possibility exists that it could once again flourish because you have two obvious massive underperformers in Meath and Kildare and if they rose again you likely would see huge crowds again. Leinster hurling depends on Wexford and Munster football depends on Cork.
The problem is once you do away with tradition, you replace it with something that is unfamiliar. You do away with big days that people look forward to and replace them something much more utilitarian. Tradition has dictated that these big days are essential to a championship. Weâve seen in recent years that 30k are guaranteed to turn up to Clones for an Ulster final between Monaghan and, say, Donegal. But if Monaghan play Kerry at the same venue, the turn out is much lower. Why? Tradition.
The same with the Munster hurling final versus an All-Ireland quarter-final. Crowds can take or leave an All-Ireland quarter-final but they flock to a Munster final. And thereâs no real point in explaining that away other than saying âtraditionâ. Thatâs the way it is. It just is.
This Munster hurling format is a behemoth because itâs a quasi-Premier League format in its structure and its style. That is a problem for Leinster hurling and itâs also a particular problem for the counties in the 10-14 bracket. But I think that format is a product of a combination of particular geographical happenstance and traditional hurling rivalry and I donât think it can necessarily be extended geographically. I think by extending it geographically you take away, not add, because Clare v Wexford or Clare v Dublin or even Clare v Kilkenny doesnât have the historical or geographical rivalry appeal of Clare v Limerick or Clare v Tipp. Even Clare v Waterford which is the furthest geographical pairing in Munster historically struggles to match the crowds of the other rivalries. Thatâs my personal view.
By far the best solution is to examine the strengths of each respective province - ie. the counties that can make them into good championships - so Wexford, Offaly, Laois, Antrim in Leinster hurling - Cork in Munster football, Roscommon and Sligo in Connacht football, Meath, Kildare, and a couple of others in Leinster football - and prime them with coaching, funding, admin personnel, whatever they need.
It isnât as easy as saying âweâll simply replace one 130 year old format with an entirely different format and all will be wellâ. Because in the GAA, the entirety of the island has been socialised into particular ways of thinking - ie. what competitions to aim at, who are our main rivals. The provincial system is an integral part of that. To rip it all up, youâd better have something very good, and I donât see anything very good being proposed by anybody.
Great post.
That kind of reminds me what they tried at minor there for a few years with the group stages instead of quarter-finals. The weakest provincial finalist could be screwed over in that idea. Although I suppose thereâs no perfect format either.
If youâre on the fringes of the first team but normally playing second team for championship then itâs a great chance to expose yourself to playing at a higher level. Most players just love having consistent games. Iâd be firmly in that camp. I thoroughly enjoyed the football league this year. Playing for the 1st and 2ndâs.
Thereâll definitely have to be more significance placed on the league but that isnât easy when you are down so many players in some areas.
A well thought-out post. I see @Massey and maybe others from counties similiar to mine own arguing for a reversion to the old system.
Weâve done well in a football context in recent years without ever threatening to punch a hole in the ceiling, while Tipp ghosted in for a Munster championship in the meantime. Is it better to be competitive in the League up to Div 2 or have a bolt of lightning win in the championship? The lads that are playing will feel more validated by the former but might never know the latter. There is inherent inequality in the system which you keep coming back to one way or there other.