Not sure if it was as clear cut as that. Teams in A got promoted and relegated within A. Same with B. So if a smaller county won 2B they were straight in with the big boys. Vice versa with teams relegated from A to B.
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Yeah. The point I was making was that without the Championship and the All Ireland qualifiers there woukd not have been the resurgence in Laois, Westmeath, Wexford and Fermanagh that decade.
Asditionnally we’ve seen that its less lokely to have a breakthrough if you allow rivals to basically run their county side like a professional sports team with unchecked budgets.
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Laois won the 1986 league from Division 4, or whatever the equivalent was of it at the time.
The McDonagh Cup let us have a crack at the All Ireland Championship proper, where we had 3 great days out in 3 weeks against Westmeath, Dublin and then Tipperary.
Even tonight, both Laois and Offaly have come through the Tier 2 side of the Leinster Minor Championship.
There’s nothing wrong with a Tier 2 competition once there’s a decent carrot at the end of it.
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That’s it, needs to be more than a cup.
Most of omthe lads would probably be happier getting back to play with theur club rather than go on training for this.
Look it, lads wont be interested in this until its a semi final. its like any waste of time of a tournament
carabao
I’d largely agree but thinking back I suppose Wexford won Division 3 in 2008 so we’d have been up in the main Sam Maguire that season anyway as a De Facto Division 2 team. Fermanagh were Div 1A or 1B in 2004 too I’d say.
There’d have been no Wicklow 2009 run under Micko with the current structure though. They were given the short straw in 2008 after beating Kildare in Leinster and weren’t allowed in to the qualifiers because Division 4 teams couldn’t enter those years. Had to make do with the Tommy Murphy Cup when they’d have taken scalps in the qualifiers.
Both Wexford and Fermanagh made their provincial final, if a div 3/4 grade team make it into provincial final again, are they put into All Ireland series or Tailteann Cup?
Think it was an Armagh v Donegal Ulster final in 2004 when Fermanagh went to an AI semi-final. Ulster Final was played in Croke Park iirc. Some Fermanagh player was picked up by a chopper to take him from a Croke Park qualifier against Cork to fly back for his wedding reception the same year.
There’s no end of potential in that final sentence……
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I think they have to win the final.
I forgot about this one. Good aul Celtic Tiger. Reminds me of Paidi O Se taking the boys off to the races in one.
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You sure that wasn’t Graham Geraghty for Meath?
I’d say there was a few.
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My read on it is a D 3/4 team reaching a provincial final and being defeated puts the into the All-Ireland series as distinct to the Tailteann Cup.
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That’s a nice story
I expect at some stage, likely next year, there will be a motion at Congress that the winners of the Talchin Cup gain entry to the “All-Ireland series” (whatever the All-Ireland “series” is supposed to be).
Presumably this would mean the winners of the Talchin Cup would play off against one of the winners of Qualifier Round 2 (the round that used to be known as Round 4) with the winners of that match qualifying for the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
But there’s a wee bit of a problem there, as there are four rounds in the Talchin Cup, with the final this year not being until July 9th. The All-Ireland quarter-finals are on June 25th/26th.
Giving the Talchin Cup winners a play-off against a qualifier team would require i) the creation of an extra round, thus adding at least a week and probably two weeks to the overall championship schedule and ii) a drastic tightening of the schedule over which the Talchin Cup is run.
Without that route back into the main championship the competition is dead in the water, but it would be a very tight squeeze fixture-wise to run two parallel championship systems.
A Talchin Cup team would have to win five matches to qualify for the All-Ireland quarter-finals, where as three of the four teams in the main qualifiers would only have to win two.
I understand the Talchin Cup is planned to incorporate a round robin phase next year, which seems particularly pointless and spectator-repellent.
Talchin.
Will they expand the early stages to a national competition then? The regional sections would become very tedious with a round robin. There’s only so many times that Wexford can play Carlow and Waterford in the one year.
Hasnt stopped Limerick and Clare meeting about 5 times per year in hurling.
The decision to create Northern and Southern “zones” was only taken last week was it not?
In truth it makes sod all difference to the (non) attractiveness of the competition.
I forgot about New York in my previous post - they add another round because they bring the competition to 17 teams.
Imagine the round robins next year.
Group A - Wicklow, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford
Group B - Laois, Louth, Longford, London
Group C - Carlow, Offaly, Limerick, Leitrim
Group D - Fermanagh, Sligo, Tipperary, Antrim
Mouthwatering.
Here’s what Uachtaran Cumann Luthchleas Gael said this morning. Did ya ever hear such shite in yer life. Fior Gael Corporate speak taken to a new level.
“(My hope is) that it takes off like a meteorite and is a great competition and some county grabs it and marches through the summer and has a wonderful occasion in Croke Park when we play the semi-finals and the final,” said McCarthy after the draw.
"It’s the local rivalries that are going to be manifested in this and rather like the league which is always considered to be a very good competition, the level of play is going to be at the same level for the teams.
"It will take off, I’ve not doubt. This is a wonderful opportunity (for teams to play at Croke Park) and for the spectators and fans to come to Croke Park on those occasions.
“There will be great days out, I’ve no doubt, across the country.”