Changes to the football championship etc

gaffer91

After the AIF, the Sunday Game panel was virtually unanimous in their belief that there should be major changes to the structure of the All Ireland football championship. Many posters on boards have made similar arguments, stating that the championship is boring and uncompetitive until the semi final stages, without enough big games to catch and hold the public's attention.

I personally would be opposed to any major changes in championship structure. I think a league type system would only help the dominance of the likes of Donegal, Dublin, Kerry and Mayo- while you may beat them on a particular day, it is unlikely that any underdog team would be able to maintain that form over the course of a season. I also believe the knock-out nature of the championship serves to make it more exciting.

I'd also be opposed to getting rid of provincial championships- while it may not matter to the likes of Kerry, Dublin and Mayo anymore, you can see how much it meant to "smaller" counties like Sligo and Roscommon when they won in 2007 and 2010 respectively, and how much it would have meant to the likes of Limerick and Louth. Getting rid of them would deprive a lot of smaller teams who have no hope of winning the AI the smaller, but still significant, prize of a provincial title.

The only major change I'd like to see is Dublin being split into 2 teams. They have a massively unfair advantage in population and funding so despite losing this year I think it is important to pre-empt Dublin dominating the All Ireland series and destroying a lot of people's interest in the sport. It would also serve to make Leinster more competitive.

Anyway, any thoughts on changes you think should be implemented in Gaelic Football?

iDave

Surprised this thread hasn't been inundated with responses yet.
I'd largely agree, I'd prefer to keep the championship structure more or less the same just with some tinkering.
I would of adopted the 4x8 proposal with those moving to other provinces being based on who lost their own provincial preliminary. It would of taken into account the political realities of having to move counties away from their home province while ending the debate about some teams have byes to semis while others don't.
Every province would then have 4 proper QFs. We wouldn't have big counties suddenly throwing their weight around in other provinces though as the preliminaries would be based on league rankings.
I'd also introduce limited seeding whereby the 4 top ranked in each province would be kept apart at QF stage but I wouldn't deliberately have 2 teams on opposites sides like we had in Munster this year.
Other than that I'd leave it alone. Jury still out the A/B side they introduced for the qualifiers.
I think the real issue is scheduling. As it is the Ulsters QFs are dragged out over 4 weeks while in Leinster this year we had 3 on one weekend but randomly the 4th on its own the following week.
I would have all provincial QFs played over 2 weekends and makes sure everyone has had 1 game by end of May.
8 of the QFs played on one weekend with 4 on a Saturday and 4 on a Sunday with one game from each province on each day. Do the same the following weekend or maybe 2 weeks later and have a Hurling only weekend inbetween.
Do the same for Semis just with the total games halved.
I'd even have all the provincial finals played on 1 weekend with a 5pm throw in on Sat followed by a 7pm. What a great Saturday that would be with the next 2 on the Sunday.
A much more streamlined calendar that provides greater fixture certainty and accommodates clubs and dual players.
Home and away agreements also to become the norm up to provincial semi level, although the provincial council/GAA can intervene if a countys home ground doesn't meet minimum standards.

Also keep Dublin as it is.

BKWDR

So to read through your post OP, you want everything to remain the same other than Dublin to be split in two? Is there not already a thread on that?

Personally I think there has to be some change. They won't get rid of the provincial championship. But they should to an open seeded draw in my opinion. Take away from the usual teams in the mix at provincial champ level. But once you have the usual strong teams competing in the business end of the year nothing will make the weaker counties stronger other than trying to adapt and work harder.

Fr Tod Umptious

iDave wrote: »

Surprised this thread hasn't been inundated with responses yet.
I'd largely agree, I'd prefer to keep the championship structure more or less the same just with some tinkering.
I would of adopted the 4x8 proposal with those moving to other provinces being based on who lost their own provincial preliminary. It would of taken into account the political realities of having to move counties away from their home province while ending the debate about some teams have byes to semis while others don't.
Every province would then have 4 proper QFs. We wouldn't have big counties suddenly throwing their weight around in other provinces though as the preliminaries would be based on league rankings.
I'd also introduce limited seeding whereby the 4 top ranked in each province would be kept apart at QF stage but I wouldn't deliberately have 2 teams on opposites sides like we had in Munster this year.
Other than that I'd leave it alone. Jury still out the A/B side they introduced for the qualifiers.
I think the real issue is scheduling. As it is the Ulsters QFs are dragged out over 4 weeks while in Leinster this year we had 3 on one weekend but randomly the 4th on its own the following week.
I would have all provincial QFs played over 2 weekends and makes sure everyone has had 1 game by end of May.
8 of the QFs played on one weekend with 4 on a Saturday and 4 on a Sunday with one game from each province on each day. Do the same the following weekend or maybe 2 weeks later and have a Hurling only weekend inbetween.
Do the same for Semis just with the total games halved.
I'd even have all the provincial finals played on 1 weekend with a 5pm throw in on Sat followed by a 7pm. What a great Saturday that would be with the next 2 on the Sunday.
A much more streamlined calendar that provides greater fixture certainty and accommodates clubs and dual players.
Home and away agreements also to become the norm up to provincial semi level, although the provincial council/GAA can intervene if a countys home ground doesn't meet minimum standards.

Also keep Dublin as it is.

4 x 8 "provinces" to me is the best way to proceed.

However the way you state it above, which is the same as the FDC proposal, is over complication if you ask me.

Why not just move the teams to the new "provinces" from the start of the campaign.
It would be much simpler and it rules out anomalies like certain teams playing in two "provinces" in one year and certain teams possibly losing 3 games before they are eliminated, e.g. Leinster prelim, Munster QF, 1st rnd qualifier.

All it is is a fixture making exercise for the senior championship so there is no need to mess too much.

How the teams to move are selected I don't know, past years performance perhaps.

I'd also think making All Ireland SF as an open draw would be good, why the need for the rotation system ?

zombieHanalei

Three All-Irelands in the last 25 years does not suggest the massive population advantage has any significant benefit to Dublin.

And given that the talk of splitting Dublin has only gathered speed in the last 4 years when they won two All-Irelands I have to say talk of splitting in response to the recent success smacks of sour grapes.

Other counties need to step up, and as we have seen in recent years Donegal and Kerry have done just that.

WesternZulu

gaffer91 wrote: »

The only major change I'd like to see is Dublin being split into 2 teams. They have a massively unfair advantage in population and funding so despite losing this year I think it is important to pre-empt Dublin dominating the All Ireland series and destroying a lot of people's interest in the sport. It would also serve to make Leinster more competitive.

Anyway, any thoughts on changes you think should be implemented in Gaelic Football?

Sure Kerry have more or less dominated the sport since its inception and I don't see anyone calling for them to be split.

BPKS

WesternZulu wrote: »

Sure Kerry have more or less dominated the sport since its inception and I don't see anyone calling for them to be split.

Population of 140,000 in Kerry. Many clubs struggling to make teams at juvenile level and having to amalgamate, often 3 clubs joining together.

Stinicker

Everytime Kerry wins the horse manure is talked about, the begrudgers are out to stop Kerry in whatever form they can. If they can't beat us on the field they will try alter the rules to prevent Kerry from winning.

Dirty Dingus McGee

Disband the league and have 3 tiers, with 11 teams in each as The championship.Each team plays each other once and the top 4 qualify for all ireland semi finals.Bottom 2 are relegated Top 2 in the second tier are promoted and 3rd bottom in the top tier and 3rd in second tier play each other in a relegation/promotion playoff.Same applies regarding promotion and relegation between 2nd and 3rd tier.There wouldn't be a huge amount of dead rubbers with this scenario in my opinion.

Championship Season starts in the beginning of May and matches are played with no more than a 2 week break between a teams matches.Club leagues are played at the same time and by the middle of August 4 teams would be left so club championships could start then for all but those 4 counties.

Provincial championships/O'Byrne Cup could be played from St Patricks Day onwards as the warm up competition.

This would result in teams of equal standard playing against each other and we would get more matches for fans in the summer when most fans want to go to matches.Sadly despite GAA being a summer sport more matches at intercounty level are not played in the summer.

There isn't a hope in hell of this happening the way the GAA is organised currently as we will get the usual complaints from the weaker counties (Offaly my own county would be sure to be one of them) that you are denying them a chance of competing against the big boys.Which is pure bull as most division 3 and 4 counties can't compete with the top teams anyway and so really don't deserve a chance to compete against the top teams and honestly I'd prefer to attend matches where we have a chance of winning and can build for the future and play against the likes of Dublin when we are good enough to rather than attending a massacre which would happen if we unfortunately get drawn against them any time soon.

Dirty Dingus McGee

My second proposal which would give the weaker counties their shot at the big boys would be this

The provincial championships are pointless these days.They are being preserved for the chance of a shock victory which happens at most once every 10 years.The championship structure should not be based on a potential underdog win once in a blue moon.

What I would do is leave the league as it is.

Then for championship have a first round which consists of 16 matches.The top 12 teams in the league are seeded and cannot meet each other in the opening round.Then we have a draw for the 16 ties and home advantage is decided by a coin toss.

The winners of the 16 first round matches progress to the next stage of the championship and this consists of 4 groups of 4 who play each other other once and the top 2 in each group progress to the AI quarter finals.

The advantage of this is.Real intensity in the opening round of the championship.

A big incentive to do well in the league.IMO almost every team in Ireland is capable of getting into the top 12 over a 5 year period in the league if they work hard.


It avoids the majority of the championship consisting of mismatches.There isn't a huge gap between the top 16 teams in Ireland.

No splitting the competition into divisions so everybody gets a chance to win the all ireland and the weaker counties are included.

ardmacha

The provincial championships are pointless these days.They are being preserved for the chance of a shock victory which happens at most once every 10 years.The championship structure should not be based on a potential underdog win once in a blue moon.

The Munster Hurling Championship and the Ulster football championship work fine.

Dirty Dingus McGee

ardmacha wrote: »

The Munster Hurling Championship and the Ulster football championship work fine.

Not really in my opinion.The team who wins the Munster championship in the last 10 years has had an extremely poor record in their semi final.So poor in fact that it would almost suggest it's a disadvantage to win the Munster championship.

The Ulster Football championship although somewhat competitive is fairly dull in my opinion and the standard of football played is poor within the ulster championship because rivalries between the counties seem to be fairly intense and a lot of teams focus on stopping the opposition rather than doing anything positive.Ulster teams almost always play better football when they play outside the provincial championship.Also only 4 teams have won it in the last 16 years.

dxhound2005

As I said on another thread the trouble is that in GAA the premier competition is the knockout competition not the league, which is the opposite of other sports. So in a knockout competition if a team gets knocked out that should be the end of it. Losing teams in the FAI cup do not get another go. This sufficed for 100 years or so with obviously plenty of weeping and gnashing of teeth about the teams who trained hard but only got one outing. The problem is compounded by the skewed format of the provinicial championships.

The introduction of qualifiers has given each team at least one other go after they lose. If a team is not good enough to win their first round provincial game and then they lose their qualifier what is the point in some artificial system trying to continue their involvement? In an ideal world the league and the league finals would be predominant but that is not going to happen. Even the league does not operate on normal grounds with no home and away.

If the counties could agree a format of 4 groups of 8 linked to the existing provinces it would at least equalise the number of games for everyone early on. Kerry won a lot of their All Irelands with only two or three serious games.

gaffer91

zombieHanalei wrote: »

Three All-Irelands in the last 25 years does not suggest the massive population advantage has any significant benefit to Dublin.

And given that the talk of splitting Dublin has only gathered speed in the last 4 years when they won two All-Irelands I have to say talk of splitting in response to the recent success smacks of sour grapes.

Other counties need to step up, and as we have seen in recent years Donegal and Kerry have done just that.

Just because Dublin have failed to take full value from their large population doesn't change the fact that it is a massively unfair advantage. It's not 'sour grapes' to state that having circa one million extra people on most other counties is giving them more than a slight edge on most other counties

homerjay2005

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

Also only 4 teams have won it in the last 16 years.

the Ulster championship is ultra competitive and on any given year, they are beating each other.

3 ulster team have won 5 all irelands between them in 12 years - Tyrone X 3, Armagh and Donegal.

Armagh, Donegal and Down have all reached finals, on top of those 5 final appearances above.

Fermanagh and Derry have all reached semi finals in this time, Cavan reached the 1/4 final last year, Monaghan have reached the 1/4 final many times. thats 8 of the 9 teams who have done reasonably well in recent years, in fact you can say only Antrim havent done well.

the ulster championship is the most competitive out there and id be pretty sure that in the timeframe you have mentioned about 4 teams winning it, that almost every team up there has at least made the final (even antrim made it in 2009 i think).

the provential system is still great IMO and theres plenty of room in the championship for it - looks at the performances of Tipp, Clare, Roscommon this year for instance up against Cork, Kerry and Mayo. there is a problem in Leinster, but the other 3 were all competitive this year.

Prop Joe

Biggest problem is the calender,A big need to free up more weekends for club activity

Seeding needs to be abolished in both Munster & Leinster IMO

Fr Tod Umptious

Prop Joe wrote: »

Biggest problem is the calender,A big need to free up more weekends for club activity

Seeding needs to be abolished in both Munster & Leinster IMO

Well they have abolished seeding in Munster.

On the schedule they tried with the A/B draw structure so thay a county would either be playing a championship game or a qualifier on a given weekend.

What bugs me is that for example Munster can start two weeks after Connaught but be finished three weeks before them.
Can they not set the provincial championships to have the use gaps between games ?

CrabRevolution

homerjay2005 wrote: »

the Ulster championship is ultra competitive and on any given year, they are beating each other.

3 ulster team have won 5 all irelands between them in 12 years - Tyrone X 3, Armagh and Donegal.

Armagh, Donegal and Down have all reached finals, on top of those 5 final appearances above.

Fermanagh and Derry have all reached semi finals in this time, Cavan reached the 1/4 final last year, Monaghan have reached the 1/4 final many times. thats 8 of the 9 teams who have done reasonably well in recent years, in fact you can say only Antrim havent done well.

the ulster championship is the most competitive out there and id be pretty sure that in the timeframe you have mentioned about 4 teams winning it, that almost every team up there has at least made the final (even antrim made it in 2009 i think).

the provential system is still great IMO and theres plenty of room in the championship for it - looks at the performances of Tipp, Clare, Roscommon this year for instance up against Cork, Kerry and Mayo. there is a problem in Leinster, but the other 3 were all competitive this year.

If you're talking about 2002 to 2014 you can nearly apply that to every province except Munster. Stretch one year back and Connacht have had 1 All Ireland Win with Galway, Mayo have 4 AI final appearances, 2 SF losses and 3 QF losses, Roscommon have 3 QF losses, Sligo have 2, that only leaves Leitrim.

There's 4 out of 5 doing well at one point or another in your time frame. In fact from 2007 to 2010 there were 4 different winners of the Connacht SFC, with every final being won by a point. I never hear anyone saying how great the Connacht championship is based on this closeness though.

What was interesting around in the 2000s was that Ulster had 2 winners in 12 years but all we heard was "most competitive championship" and "anyone can win it". In the mean time there were 4 winners (out of 6) of Connacht and 5* winners (out of 11) in Leinster, but that seemed not to matter.

*Excluding Louth of course, who deserve a mention as the team who came as close as it's possible to come to winning, but at the end of the day, didn't win.

zombieHanalei

gaffer91 wrote: »

Just because Dublin have failed to take full value from their large population doesn't change the fact that it is a massively unfair advantage. It's not 'sour grapes' to state that having circa one million extra people on most other counties is giving them more than a slight edge on most other counties

It's not a case that they have "failed to take advantage", it's a case that people have massively over-estimated the advantage that brings. It's sour grapes when you don't hear about splitting Dublin unless they win an All-Ireland, and there was no serious talk about it until 2011. It's only seen as a problem once they start winning.

gaffer91

zombieHanalei wrote: »

It's not a case that they have "failed to take advantage", it's a case that people have massively over-estimated the advantage that brings. It's sour grapes when you don't hear about splitting Dublin unless they win an All-Ireland, and there was no serious talk about it until 2011. It's only seen as a problem once they start winning.

They haven't overestimated it and it is that Dublin have failed to take advantage. Dublin just didn't have their act together for many years.

I'm pretty sure it was mooted in GAA circles in the early 2000s and people like myself have been saying it for many years.

Anyway this thread was supposed to be about all changes to the GAA and not just splitting Dublin in two. As Dubs tend to get very precious when it is pointed out what a huge advantage they have it is probably best to just park the issue here to prevent it taking over the thread.

Prop Joe

Anyone care to critique this proposal?

Based on seeding of previous 10 years of league & championship


Top 16 teams into an open draw with the 8 winners progressing to the last 16

Bottom 16 teams into an open draw with 4 winners progressing to the last 16

4 Provincial winners joining the last 16 in a straight knock out to AI Final day (Any double up's would receive bye to QF)

Godge

gaffer91 wrote: »

The only major change I'd like to see is Dublin being split into 2 teams. They have a massively unfair advantage in population and funding so despite losing this year I think it is important to pre-empt Dublin dominating the All Ireland series and destroying a lot of people's interest in the sport. It would also serve to make Leinster more competitive.
?

Kerry have won 5 of the last 11, 37 in total.

If you want to even things up, break Kerry up into North Kerry and South Kerry.

Even if it means a team from Kerry never wins it again, it will allow someone else to catch up. Even Dublin are far behind them.

For many neutrals not only was the last final the worst they had ever seen, they had no team to shout for. The choice was the perennial winners Kerry against the team that invented puke football.

In hurling it was the same, Kilkenny against the second-highest winner Tipperary. At least they served up some decent hurling.

If the only change you want to make is split up Dublin, then you have no interest in improving the game, only in begrudgery.

Far better, rather than the structure, is to look at the rules of the game. The best attacking teams - Dublin, Mayo, Cork - lost out this year to teams that play defensive football.

Godge

gaffer91 wrote: »

They haven't overestimated it and it is that Dublin have failed to take advantage. Dublin just didn't have their act together for many years.

I'm pretty sure it was mooted in GAA circles in the early 2000s and people like myself have been saying it for many years.

Anyway this thread was supposed to be about all changes to the GAA and not just splitting Dublin in two. As Dubs tend to get very precious when it is pointed out what a huge advantage they have it is probably best to just park the issue here to prevent it taking over the thread.

But it is the only thing you have talked about.

gaffer91 wrote: »

After the AIF, the Sunday Game panel was virtually unanimous in their belief that there should be major changes to the structure of the All Ireland football championship. Many posters on boards have made similar arguments, stating that the championship is boring and uncompetitive until the semi final stages, without enough big games to catch and hold the public's attention.

I personally would be opposed to any major changes in championship structure. I think a league type system would only help the dominance of the likes of Donegal, Dublin, Kerry and Mayo- while you may beat them on a particular day, it is unlikely that any underdog team would be able to maintain that form over the course of a season. I also believe the knock-out nature of the championship serves to make it more exciting.

I'd also be opposed to getting rid of provincial championships- while it may not matter to the likes of Kerry, Dublin and Mayo anymore, you can see how much it meant to "smaller" counties like Sligo and Roscommon when they won in 2007 and 2010 respectively, and how much it would have meant to the likes of Limerick and Louth. Getting rid of them would deprive a lot of smaller teams who have no hope of winning the AI the smaller, but still significant, prize of a provincial title.

The only major change I'd like to see is Dublin being split into 2 teams. They have a massively unfair advantage in population and funding so despite losing this year I think it is important to pre-empt Dublin dominating the All Ireland series and destroying a lot of people's interest in the sport. It would also serve to make Leinster more competitive.

Anyway, any thoughts on changes you think should be implemented in Gaelic Football?

gaffer91 wrote: »

Just because Dublin have failed to take full value from their large population doesn't change the fact that it is a massively unfair advantage. It's not 'sour grapes' to state that having circa one million extra people on most other counties is giving them more than a slight edge on most other counties

You disguised an OP looking for changes to the Championship as another attempt to have a go at Dublin. As someone else said, 3 All-Irelands in 25 years is not a problem.