GAA have league and championship wrong way around
Saturday night and in Newry and Cork the locals come in their droves for the visit of the reigning All Ireland champions. Dublin survive a sticky patch to win. Kilkenny survive a much stickier and trickier one that left us all enthralled.
The next day in Salthill and we’re reminded if there’s one show better than a Joe show, it’s when Bubbles joins him on stage for the encore.
Meanwhile up in Letterkenny, the team having and serving up the most fun in football devastate the reputedly most daunting defence in the game.
That was all without leaving your sofa, not to mention following all the updates from all the other games around the country: Dublin heading down to Waterford and winning. Kevin Walsh’s Galway storming back to draw up in Armagh.
The seven-goal shootout between Derry and Laois. Sligo going to Kildare and subjecting Cian O’Neill to his first loss, one of three surprise results in a highly- competitive Division Three... Cracking games all over the place.
To get an idea of just how manic a weekend it was, consider this: Mayo-Kerry wasn’t shown live. It wasn’t even the game TG4 chose to show deferred coverage of, as they understandably wanted (us) to get a closer look at this rampant Roscommon team.
You’d to wait for an extended League Sunday that night to catch some of the action from Castlebar. Monaghan-Cork didn’t even get a look in on the same show.
Think about that for a moment. For five straight years, Kerry and Mayo have been among the top four teams in the country.
Over the same period, Cork and Monaghan have been vying and rotating with Tyrone for the dubious honour of being the best of the rest.
Just bear that in mind when you think of the football action that will be imposed on you live on your screens during the longer, sunnier months of May and June.
The football championship begins here at home the weekend of May 15. The pick of the bunch? Well, suffice to say, there ain’t exactly a Cork-Monaghan to choose. Instead it’s Fermanagh- Antrim (once again), Longford-Offaly (yet again), Laois-Wicklow or Louth-Carlow, whichever tickles your own fancy the most.
(Of course the GAA’s stock response to such an underwhelming opening schedule is to say all competitions in all sports are slow-burners. Except their own leagues routinely start with match-ups like Kilkenny-Waterford, Dublin-Kerry, Mayo-Cork...).
Then picture the following week. Another week with the ground hard, the mud and bitter cold of January that so diluted the quality of those league openers now a distant memory.
Managers have long discarded their woolly hats and instead tug at the peak of their baseball caps. What’s the best football game on offer? Derry-Tyrone. Not bad, even though if were on during the league, it would just about make the second channel on Setanta.
The second-most attractive football game? Eh, probably Kildare-Wexford, when you consider Roscommon- Leitrim is the only alternative.
On to the next weekend, May 28-29, another precious slot in a sport and association that has so many games played in winter.
The likely prime time game Joe and Spillane will get to moan about? Cavan-Armagh, another game that would only make a tasty one on Setanta Sports Two during the league.
Next best? Suffice to say, Mayo-Kerry it ain’t. Instead that weekend you have Mayo-London, along with two games in Munster between teams all operating in Divisions Three and Four.
Things pick up slightly the first weekend of June. There’s Monaghan-Down, though it would be the fourth of four games in a round of Division One games, and most likely Laois-Dublin in Nowlan Park.
The follow week: June 11-12. Again, a prime summer slot. And yet the pick of the football action that weekend is probably, in the light of last year’s shock outcome, Roscommon and Sligo.
More earnest supporters will make a case for Cork-Tipp even though Cork have only been beaten once by anyone else other than Kerry in Munster the last 50 years, while RTÉ will most likely show either Louth, Carlow, or Meath against Longford, Offaly, or Westmeath, the kind of Groundhog Day game the Leinster championship specialises in.
Kerry finally commence their championship that weekend. Against Clare or Limerick. Looking forward to that one, the way you would have been to their last couple of league games against Donegal and Mayo?
Or, is it dawning on you, like we’d hope it would dawn on the GAA, that maybe they’ve got this league and championship arseways around?
Like Kerry, Clare are currently being tested weekly, playing in a very even Division Three where they’re one of three teams sharing second spot though they’ve all lost two games.
Virtually every game in that division is competitive and it counts. Can the same really be said about a Munster semi-final against Kerry? Even Colm Collins has publicly admitted how uninspiring he found the championship draw was and how the provincial system imprisons counties like his own.
Ryan Feeney, the Ulster Council’s Head of Community and Public Affairs, has defended the status quo on the grounds “the GAA is not the Premiership.
“If we had a 32-county All Ireland and Derry drew Kerry and they were to play at a neutral venue would it attract as many as Derry playing Tyrone n the first round of the championship?” he argued.
“Absolutely not.”
That’s not the alternative, though we would argue that a lot more people would be excited about and attend Kerry-Derry than Kerry-Clare.
Has Ryan ever been at any Munster football championship semi-final that wasn’t Cork-Kerry?
Kerry-Derry doesn’t have to be at a neutral venue. People will travel. This past month we’re seeing droves of Roscommon people making the trip to Killarney and Letterkenny. Mayo brought a big crowd to Monaghan; last weekend Monaghan brought thousands to Cork.
We’re not comparing the GAA championship to the Premiership. We’re comparing it to the league.
There were 13,000 people in Castlebar last Sunday. What would that have been if it had been a round-robin championship game in better weather? Probably 22,000-plus, more than have attended any Galway-Mayo Connacht semi-final the past six years.
Next week, there’ll be a full house for Clare-Limerick hurling promotion decider in Ennis, a bigger crowd than would have attended most of Clare’s opening Munster championship games from 2010 to 2013.
There were 6,500 in Walsh Park last Sunday for the visit of Dublin. What would that have been had it been championship?
Or if Cork-Kilkenny in Cork was, and it was an All Ireland quarter-final rather than a league quarter-final spot the home side were fighting for?
Managers have all these games in February and March where they’re maybe trying to instil new tactical systems and issue instructions on the training ground, contending with the howling wind and rain and the challenge of keeping their players warm, all the while with another so- called ‘must-win’ game bearing down on them at the weekend.
Then in the summer it’s the opposite. The weather is better. They have more time to work with their players. Too much time, actually, and too few games.
There has to be a better balance.
Until then, best of luck trying to catch Monaghan-Donegal or the Galway-Cavan promotion decider on the box in the last round of the league.
And enjoy and wonder why Joe and Pat are giving out so much about the quality of football we’ll be subjected to for two of the best months of the year.
