John Fogarty: Truncated inter-county season needs new fix

ISSUES: Former Tyrone star Seán Cavanagh has raised the issue of ‘too many meaningless games’. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

For a variety of reasons but most of them relating to the final itself, the Ulster Council were breathing a sigh of relief at the conclusion of their senior football championship on Sunday.

In Leinster, the province with the biggest fixtures schedule, there was an easing too. In his match programme notes for Sunday’s Dublin-Louth SFC final, provincial chairman Derek Kent outlined just how challenging these past couple of months have been. “As our championships draw to a conclusion, we in Leinster have played over 60 games across our three football grades in a two-month window,” he wrote.

“Great credit must go to every county, but it has been a very heavy workload on our officiating team, administrators, volunteers and our players. The question is: Is this best practice for the promotion of our games?”

Doubling up as the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) chairman, Kent has a hefty in-tray but it would give him a nationwide perspective on just how pressing the split season has been on those running and participating in inter-county games. As one of the main proponents of the split season in 2020 when he was Wexford chairman, you would imagine Kent is hardly going to abandon something that has proven to work for the vast majority of those who play the games. Nevertheless, he is aware of the side effects.

“The ever-increasing number of games in a shorter time span will lead to us upgrading and maintaining our inter-county facilities,” Kent said in his address to Leinster convention in January.

Last February, GAA director general Tom Ryan was asked about the impact the new All-Ireland SFC format would place on the disciplinary system, which apart from some staff members is operated by several volunteers.

“The expectation is it will put a bit more pressure upon us. The job is you accommodate that extra pressure without undermining the solid stuff that has stood us in good stead up to now.”

That structure will be put to the test as the GAA accommodates 48 Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cup games as well as eight preliminary quarter-finals across both competitions in just seven weekends. That’s 39 more football championship fixtures than last year.

On paper, the split season was a simple solution but to make it work while augmenting the volume of championship matches in virtually the same timeframe requires more money, manpower, and space. Propelled by the pandemic, the idea of separating the club and inter-county championship seasons was an opportunity seized.

That’s not to say it can’t be bettered. Rather than having room for improvement, it needs room to improve. It was on the back of truncated, senior knockout football and qualifier hurling championships and a regionalised Allianz Football League that the split season was introduced. Round-robin formats weren’t really considered and as mentioned in this column previously neither the leagues nor the championships, not even this newly-designed one, truly reflect the smaller parameters of the inter-county window.

Last week, former Tyrone footballer Seán Cavanagh raised the issue of “too many meaningless games”.

For many, football’s preliminary quarter-finals come into that bracket, although they are an attempt to curb dead rubbers. Hurling’s preliminary quarter-finals are an extravagance too –— with the exception of Laois beating Dublin in 2019, they have been formalities for the fully-fledged Liam MacCarthy Cup teams. The CCCC have already red-circled the league finals as excess, particularly so close to the provincial championships. The GPA have highlighted the pre-season competitions as unnecessary. If there is no appetite for reshaping the leagues or moving the provincial championships to earlier in the year, there is no shortage of matches that can be culled so that the inter-county season can be shaped to better fit its window.

If there isn’t enough support to drop the guillotine, then the GAA may look to create more space by extending the All-Ireland championships into August. That would bring its criticisms and be exclaimed as the thin end of the wedge but could be just the tweak required. The club period would largely be unaffected if the All-Ireland club semi-finals join the finals in January.

Last week’s GAAGO controversy was a heady cocktail of brouhaha, political grandstanding, and genuine fears that the GAA have promotionally shot themselves in the foot while disenfranchising senior citizens and those in rural broadband blackspots.

So much of it could have been avoided by getting the balance right between the games shown on RTÉ and the pay-per-view streaming service. However, that is a challenge in this pinched scheduling. One point made by RTÉ group head of sport Declan McBennett but lost in the debate was the crush the national broadcaster was feeling: “On the basis of 15 games across eight weekends, four provinces and two codes, we cannot simply concentrate on the Munster hurling championship,” he said.

When everyone is feeling the squeeze, relief must be forthcoming.

Jury still out on Sam Maguire group stages

With reports the ticket pick-up for Saturday’s Kerry-Mayo Sam Maguire Cup Group 1 game is not as strong as expected, it would appear supporters are not buying the importance of what is the most attractive across the eight opening games.

With both teams likely needing just one game to progress to the knockout stages, a victory in the first game isn’t a must, although to win through to the All-Ireland semi-finals teams finishing second and third will have three games in as many weekends. Spending five weekends to cut the number of teams from 16 to 12 seems wasteful although the preliminary quarter-finals have been inserted to cut down on dead rubbers.

“Three places in each group progress is a provision that was inserted precisely to avoid dead rubbers,” said GAA director of club, player and games administration Feargal McGill last year. “The possibility of games that have no meaning is minuscule in this proposal because each of the four places in a group will have meaning: first place goes straight to quarter-final, second to home preliminary quarter-final and third qualifies for preliminary quarter-final.”

Former GAA president Seán Kelly believes the preliminary quarter-final element makes the competition unwieldy and less competitive. Both men have strong points and having home advantage in a preliminary quarter-final by virtue of finishing second is a nugget worth chasing but losing just four teams in the Sam Maguire Cup, five in the Tailteann Cup, doesn’t seem competitive enough. Looking at the groups, A and B featuring Galway, Armagh, Monaghan, and Westmeath are the stand-outs. Dublin must be concerned they won’t be battle-hardened by the time they reach the All-Ireland quarter-finals unless Roscommon pull out all the stops or Kildare back up their manager’s Croker sentiments and hurt Dublin at a provincial venue.

Murphy and Stack put in tricky spots

This weekend, a Limerick man takes charge of a Clare-Cork Munster SHC game where a victory for Cork could contribute towards Limerick exiting the championship should they lose to Tipperary later on Sunday afternoon.

Cork also face Limerick the following Sunday. It’s an awkward position Johnny Murphy has been put in just as it is for Clare-born and now Dublin-affiliated Seán Stack who takes charge of the Tipperary-Limerick game.

Should Clare fail to win the first game, what happens in Thurles could have repercussions for the county’s existence in the championship. The bona fides of the referees is not in question here; the process by which they were appointed to these fixtures is.

Sadly, it’s not enough that they are proven referees. Perception pervades and it makes their roles so incredibly onerous this weekend.

It’s normal practice for disciplinary committee officials to recuse themselves not just in the event their county is the subject of a case but if their county is in line to face one that is facing a sanction. Shouldn’t the same rules apply to referees?

Undoubtedly, the pool of leading hurling match officials has rarely been as shallow and the number of head-high fouls in recent games missed by other referees may have coloured the appointments committee’s judgement but some juggling could have prevented this situation. It’s unfair on Murphy and Stack.

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