The backdoor never bothered lads once they owned the house.
You can do that under a league format which still has All-Ireland quarter-finals.
By far the biggest impediment to changing the format is the existence of the Ulster championship, because it works as a competition and because the Ulster final carries more weight of history, tradition and occasion than any other match in the GAA bar All-Ireland finals.
You can’t move to a league format and keep the Ulster final. If a league format comes in, the Ulster final is gone forever.
This is a lovely trophy.
But they could hand out any of sport’s great trophies - the old Bob O’Keefe Cup or the US PGA’s Wannamaker Trophy or the Stanley Cup - for winning this competition, and it still wouldn’t change anything.
It would still be a loser’s cup.
What I hate about this bullshit is that it completely eliminates the possibily of an underdog story like Fermanagh and Wexford in the 2000s.
Rather thayvtry and bridge/control the gap between the amount being invested by some Division 1 teams the attitude appears to be that if there’s less team that can compete then no one will care.
Westmeath will give this a good rattle,they even have the easier side of the draw.
You’re never going to see the likes of that again.Ever.
@Fagan_ODowd is on the money here. If it was structured in a way that allowed the winners or even finallists back into the main competition you would get buy in from the players and supporters.
What divisions were Fermanagh and Wexford in at the time?
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I’d love to see a cap brought in on training expenses,that might help level out teams a bit.
But in that case there is no incentive for Tailteann Cup-designated teams to reach a provincial final because the route to the quarter-finals would be harder, if you did reach a provincial final you’d almost certainly have to beat a Division 1 team to reach the quarter-finals, whereas you wouldn’t by going the Tailteann Cup route.
Essentially it would then serve as merely splitting the qualifiers into “strong” and “weak” sections, which seems pretty pointless.
Have the GPA started back talking to the press yet since the last time it was tried?
I mean a cap on how much counties could spend on training a senior football team.
But wasn’t that what they tried to do? Am I wrong in this? Sure it was via expenses but it was their attempt nonetheless
youd imagine it still wouldn’t level the playing field…
Some co. would have to spend far more in players expense than others.
Maybe a centralised pool of all Sponsorship money etc akin to the nfl would be the way to go, but having someone with the competence to pull that off is another thing…
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Fermanagh had played in Division 1A in 2004, Wexford won Division 3 in 2008, which was the first year of the 4 tier league structure.
While you can say moving to a 4 tier structure has brought the National League on as a competition, it has also grown the gap between the stronger teams and the weaker ones. Matches against top teams are now unattainable for weaker teams outside of the Championship. The old structure was flatter, if you went up from 2A or 2B under the old structure, you’d be guaranteed 7 decent matches the following year. Even you’d don’t go up, 2A and 2B were still of a decent standard, I remember Kerry, Armagh, Meath, Dublin, Cork, Tyrone etc each having stints in Division 2A or B in the noughties, which helped weaker counties come summertime.
By grading the League more narrowly and making that notionally a better competition, the GAA has taken something from it’s main competition.
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Derry would have been playing in this for the past 5 years if it was in existence.
When they win the All Ireland this year it will be a great example to these counties that it can be done.
Wexford were Division 1 in the 2000s, so would have be in all Ireland proper in a tiered system
They won Division 3 when they got to the semi final in 2008.
I think there were only two divisions with and A and B split when they were in Division 1 earlier in the decade.
Was there not multiple divisions in 80s and 90s, or am I misremembering?
Had a look there, when they got to the league final in 2005 there was Division 1A & 1B (present day division 1 & 2 combined) and then Division 2A & 2B (division 3 & 4 combined). Basically the tailteann cup.