Kieran Shannon: Gaelic football needs voices for change, or it faces another summer off-Broadway

Bad stuff will happen to Gaelic football when good people say nothing

Clare manager Colm Collins doesn’t mind playing Kerry and Limerick and Tipperary yet again in the spring in a springtime provincial round-robin championship, but he’d like his players and the public to experience playing someone else in their opening championship games. Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

Before the All Ireland quarter-final weekend of 2016, the Super 8s had only existed in Páraic Duffy’s imagination and nowhere else. There had been no demand for it. Not from the GPA or any player, manager, official, or the public itself, as much as there would have been the odd cry for the better teams to play each other more often.

But what the Super 8s had was a Daddy in Duffy. And what that Daddy had was conviction. It was his baby and he was going to move heaven and earth for it to see the light of day. When he announced the pregnancy that particular August, he pre-empted every possible criticism and, in a lengthy document, presented an argument to counter and appease all of them. And sure enough, within nine months, Duffy’s baby was delivered and christened at a Special Congress in the spring of 2017.

It has always been the way when it’s come to any significant reform of the GAA championships. Duffy, as games administration committee chairman, was pivotal in the devising and adopting of the once-ingenious qualifier system. A hurling development committee featuring big names like Loughnane, Griffin, and English, and with the full blessing of then president Seán Kelly, brought the Christy Ring Cup and much more into the hurling world. John Horan wanted a legacy — which ended up being his skilful handling of the Covid conundrum — and so he conceived and delivered the Tailteann Cup.

The problem for the football championship proposals being touted ahead of Special Congress next month is that it has no recognisable parents, or at least one with the sway and the conviction of a Duffy. It may have as much, if not far more, support from the players and the GPA and managers and the public itself than most of the aforementioned previous championship reforms, but it could wither on the vine because it hasn’t been adequately championed by officialdom — at least so far.

Back in February, GAA president Larry McCarthy spoke about his desire for the association to be “bold” and trial one of the proposed new formats, but he’s had precious little to say since on the matter, possibly because they originated from a workforce commissioned by his predecessor and not he himself.

The chairman of that national fixtures calendar review workforce, Eddie Sullivan, has essentially said their work is done now. In this paper, he told John Fogarty that Croke Park could and should review their merits in light of the pandemic experience. Hardly a ringing endorsement of his own group’s work.

As for the “lads in Croke Park” who are “well capable of looking after that”, there hasn’t been a peep from director general Tom Ryan, which appears to be his default form of ‘leadership’.

You would think the only reason Feargal McGill, as director of games administration, signed off on such a flawed format for a 2021 championship was so it would fail spectacularly and demonstrate the need for a bolder championship format for 2022 and beyond, but he gives the air of someone who could take or leave what Sullivan & Co formulated.

The only officials with a bit of urgency and skin in this game would seem to be provincial council officers who see the more imaginative of the proposed formats as not only diminishing the allure of the provincial championships but their own authority. And that increasingly leaves the prospect that while the playing body — at least outside of Ulster — may mostly be in favour of change, county board officers will be more anxious not to offend their fellow blazers than those who don their county jersey.

That’s where the conviction and personal investment of a Duffy-like figure is being sorely missed. Conor O’Donoghue, a member of the Sullivan-chaired fixtures workforce, has gone into considerable detail to outline how the extra games that would go with a provincial round-robin spring league followed by a national league-based championship would bring in greater revenue and sponsorship for most units of the association. But he’s an unfamiliar name and a barely audible voice. He needs some sopranos to join in with him.

Several managers have already piped up, most namely Tony McEntee and Colm Collins. While they’re understandably underwhelmed about the proposal calling for four eight-team provincial conferences — a horse drawn by a committee if ever there was one — they are strongly in favour of the alternative.

Collins doesn’t mind playing Kerry and Limerick and Tipperary yet again in the spring in a springtime provincial round-robin championship, but he’d like his players and the public to experience playing someone else in their opening championship games.

Take Galway for example, who will also operate in Division Two next season. It borders Clare. A Clare club is as likely to play a Galway one in a challenge game as it is one from any Munster county. By right Clare-Galway should be as intense a rivalry as Clare has with any Munster county, as frequent a pairing as Monaghan-Fermanagh, say. And yet Clare and Galway have never played in championship, while seven times over the last seven years alone, Clare have been pitted against their traditional slavemasters Kerry. No wonder Collins claims he and his players are “roaring for change”.

If both motions fail to reach the 60% mark, chances are we’ll be left with the pre-pandemic status quo — without the Super 8s as the split-season means there’ll hardly be time to run them off. It’s a scary scenario for football.

Next summer hurling will again have its round-robin provincial championships. The RTÉ schedule won’t be like what it was these past two championships, where at least every second live televised game was a football one. Instead it will be more like that of 2018 where there was only one football match televised live before the provincial finals; who in May wants to watch Con O’Callaghan go up against Laois when you could instead be watching Tony Kelly going up against Limerick?

But if the new proposals are adopted, you could see O’Callaghan going up against Kerry in Killarney next May. Now that you would not want to miss.

Sullivan has a point that the proposal Collins favours might need a tweak here or there. Jim McGuinness and the Ulster lobby are particularly concerned that it currently has no reward for winning your provincial championship in the spring. There should be. Under the proposed league-based format, every team will have at least seven championship games. There is a big difference between being on the right side of the 4-3 home-and-away split. Every provincial champion should be assured they’ll have a fourth home game.

There is also a strong case that instead of five teams from Division 1 and three from Division 2 qualifying for the All-Ireland series, they should just mix up the 16 teams, split them into Division 1A and 1B with the top four in each making it through to the playoffs alongside the top side from each of the lower two divisions.

But that might be too late or complex to tweak now. What counts is that the thrust of it is passed, otherwise May and most of June will be effectively hurling-only affairs, as it was in 2018 and 2019.

The GPA, or at least its players, might need to get more bolshie with their county board officers and leave them in no doubt as to which format they would prefer. And if McCarthy wants the bold change he spoke about, someone of his or Ryan’s stature will need to speak up.

Otherwise, as Collins put it in paraphrasing Burke, bad stuff will happen to the sport when good people say nothing.