Its clear that God has absolutely no time for this split season nonsense.
I championed playing the Provincials as the season opening competition years ago but the romantics shot it down.
Provincials first with the leagues feeding into the championship is the obvious way forward
A league feeding into what presumably will be another league? How exciting, not.
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Why do we just rip up 120 years of tradition?
Something like 22 out of 32 Counties have won a provincial championship in the last 30 odd years which isnât a lot in the grand scheme of things.
@Cheasty will explain about competitiveness being the most important thing, but without a sense of occasion the whole thing just dies.
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Youâve championed the idea of the old Div 1A/1B and 2A/2B for the league to narrow the gap between the top tier and bottom havenât you?
Iâd like a championship structure with the provincials (for now anyway) and qualifiers. The 16 teams eliminated in Rounds 1 and 2 of the qualifiers can go into a knockout Tailteann Cup like in the old Tommy Murphy Cup. The current system sucks the life out of the provincials. Auld lads havenât a clue what the stakes are in matches theyâre watching on the Sunday Game.
Iâd prefer Senior/Intermediate/Junior to the current system but obviously that has it faults too which youâve alluded to before. Even Champions League style groups of 6 groups of 4 and 2 groups of 5 (to accommodate New York and London) would be more enjoyable than the current set-up.
Social media and clueless media coverage is a large part of it. Slogans and half baked nonsense ideas dreamt up by eejits proliferate and the GAA sleepwalks into a disaster.
âWe need change!!!â
We donât need hair-brained change, which is what weâve had since 2017.
Eamon Fitzmaurice talking here about âwe shouldnât think that if the provincial championships are played earlier in the year that they would be devaluedâ.
Who is he kidding? As it is playing them in April theyâre already hugely devalued, if you play them in January they are the OâByrne Cup.
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Yes, because the championship is supposed to be on the day, that is what has always mattered. If itâs not on the day itâs not championship. Championship games are supposed to be prize fights, there needs to be the vague hope at least of a shock. The current league system has helped create a championship where inevitability is the order of the day.
The elitist Division 1 creates creeping professionalism. A league system favours the strong. Instead of trying to mitigate the advantages of the strong to create better overall competitiveness and thus a better championship, the GAA has gone with the Bayern Munich/PSG model where the strong have competition formats which accentuate their advantages.
The GAA does this because theyâre trying to create what is effectively a Premier League of GAA. But you canât do that, because the underlying conditions are completely different. They donât understand that you canât do that. The GAA is not supposed to be about that sort of elitism. But there are so many vested interests, so many people who gain monetarily in coaching and backroom, and they hold a lot of influence, and they need loads of pointless games to justify that.
But the likes of Leitrim, Longford have always been cannon fodder. How can that be changed? Demographics the issue.
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Longford knocked Mayo and Derry out of the Championship not so long ago.
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Ah here
They nearly beat Kerry another year.
Sligo really ought to have taken Kerry out too that time.
There was an equity there that has been allowed to be eroded away and instead of trying to wrestle it back, the GAA seem happy to see counties just give up.
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The old system was complete shite and people were sick of it. There had to be something new just to try it at least. The ONLY way to save it is supporters taking secondary competitions ie Tailteann cup seriously. If they donât inter county gaelic football is just going to be a complete minority pursuit in 20 out of the 32 counties just like it is in hurling.
No amount of tinkering or reverting to knock outs etc will save it. If Longford v Meath was straight knock out Leinster championship even less people would give a fuck. They are only playing for the honour of being hammered by Dublin one way or another.
Leitrim usually lose and will always usually lose. But they havenât always been cannon fodder. They generally lost by single figures in Connacht, often low single figures. That isnât cannon fodder. Thatâs the point as a supporter, to go to a game knowing youâll probably lose but not without hope of a win, and that if there is a win, you want to be there for it.
Even in recent years they beat Louth in the qualifiers.
In 2007 they took reigning League champions Donegal to extra-time in the qualifiers, losing by only 2 points in the end.
How did that happen back them but yet now seems impossible?
Players got sick of playing and putting everything into it for so little. Fans got sick of watching it. Itâs the 100 plus years of tradition that ironically killed it. It was losing tradition and people just got sick of it. With the club being so important to people too it was probably a bit of an artificial construct anyway especially in places with no tradition of success.
The old system was excellent until the GAA brought in the elitist stratified League divisions. The GAA made that choice because they wanted a Premier League type product. Instead it turned much of the championship into a PSG situation.
Again and again and again in the GAA, the symptoms of a problem are addressed, not the causes of the problem. You get nowhere if you address symptoms, not causes.
The Sunday Indo today is talking about a three tier championship. The elitism grows and grows. The GAA wonât be happy until there are franchises. Nobody will care about franchises.
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But nightclubs were excellent until people got sick of them and countless more examples. Inter county GAA was and remains a dead duck in most counties. There was a time when it was important but that was long gone under the old system and it looks like the new one wonât save it
People who cheerled these idiotic changes shouldnât complain when interest in GAA dwindles and dwindles nationwide. They were warned what would happen.
Ultimately itâs the GAAâs own choices and lack of understanding of itself that have damned it.
I fundamentally disagree and feel it was dwindling anyway. I donât think the pace of dwindling has increased. Itâll still be popular in big traditional counties and maybe even more so under a new league based system when that beds in. For counties like Fermanagh and Longford itâs fucked. UNLESS they embrace the tailteann cup. But they almost certainly wonât.
Except it demonstrably has. The championship became a much different beast between about 2009/10 and 2015/16.
Things were pretty equitable in 2009/10. By 2015/16 only three teams could win the All-Ireland and hidings were becoming commonplace and theyâve become more commonplace again since.
That doesnât happen by accident, it happens because of stupid choices.
were the provincal championships really the problem?
if people want to scrap them well then the Sam Maguire Cup and the Tailteann Cup wil be the only inter county championship silverware. Is that what counties really want?
I doubt it is
In the last 30 years or so in football - Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Tipperary, Clare, Cavan, Kildare, Westmeath, Laois have all enjoyed days of days that will be remembered for ever by winning a provincal title for either the first time ever or after a long famine. Limerick had some great days and seasons in Munster without actually winning one. There has been some amazing scenes after Ulster finals year in year out
It seems people want to scrap this and lose all the tradition and history associated with it, they effectively already have by playing them in April
We were told the Tommy Murphy Cup and then the Tailteann Cup would be great as counties would be playing against teams of their own level in championship, the reality counties are lukewarm at best about it and lads tip off to play ball in the states instead at the same rate they always did pre these competitions ever existed
In the debate on the provinces people say they aint working because kerry and dublin keep winning Munster and Leinster. In my lifetime Kerry, Cork, Clare, Tipp have all won Munster and Limerick damn near did, Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Offaly, Westmeath and Laois have all won Leinster. It is not the provincal structure that has caused Meath and Kildare to go disgracefully downward in terms of their competiveness ditto Cork. If them counties get their house in order they would be winning Munster and Leinster far more regular. The decline of football standards in counties that should be strong has got mixed up in debate about the provinces. fixing standards in counties rather than ending the provincals should be the focus
For me the best system was the early 2000s system, the provinces played as always, every county got a 2nd chance via the back door qualifier just one mind you and then the tommy murphy cup if you were a weaker county that was gone early in the qualifiers
for me it had the best balance - every county had a shot at a provincal title, sam maguire and if you were too shite to make an impact in them after 2 games , well then you had the Tommy Murphy cup. If you were too shite to make an impact there or players couldnt be arsed to play in it well then I am sure what the GAA could do at that stage - all the matches had a sense of jeopardy as well unlike this present round robin carry on in the last 16 groups
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