Players lead way in searching for a format that works
In other years you at least got the sense the television people were really trying — from Kevin McStay and a panel arguing who should have been on but was left out, to Neil Delamere and Patrick Kielty making Michael Lyster wince but a nation laugh at last year’s bash.
This year there wasn’t a hint of sulphur or fun. It was all very stiff, all very inoffensive, all very oifigiúil; even Dessie Farrell, the figurehead of those former renegades the GPA, seemed right at home observing all the banal formalities alongside Christy Cooney and President Mary McAleese.
Thankfully though, Farrell and his colleagues had earlier in the day showed they had retained their capacity to question and challenge the status quo.
Only hours earlier at the players’ representatives’ annual general meeting, GPA delegates had voted to change the championship structures which would see the major competitions in hurling and football run off on a round-robin, rather than provincial, basis on the grounds it would simultaneously guarantee a better programme of games for both inter-county and club players. Already Paraic Duffy has questioned the merits of dismantling or reducing the provincial championships, and you could even question how big a debate there has been within the GPA membership itself on such an issue, but it is still good to see that someone is looking for the optimum way of promoting the games.
Last Sunday the remark, “What kind of day and time of year is this to be playing so many county finals?” was as frequent and as incessant all around the country as the rain itself. Some of the finals still proved to be cracking affairs but many were marred by the conditions.
It would be a shame though, that in the clamour for club championships to be run off earlier, a county like Clare would seriously reduce the number of games it provides its club players and instead go back to an old-style, do-or-die format. In Clare, every club team is guaranteed four championship games. That might be one too many but it’s a lot better than other counties, such as Tyrone football that runs a marathon-style league but still runs its championship on a strictly knockout basis. That dread that all your year’s work could be finished in just one game, by one bad official’s call, cultivates fearful, conservative football and stifles the development of players and managers.
Last weekend, for instance, Peter Canavan stepped down as Errigal Ciaran manager after three years at the helm. In that time they never even reached a championship semi-final, yet they won two leagues. His team played too many league games and not enough championship games.
In a county like Clare they have a better balance; the only problem is players and their management don’t know for sure when their games will be.
A Champions League-style inter-county programme would greatly increase the chances of facilitating that, rather than depending on the more random nature of the status quo which relies on how Clare go in the early rounds of the Munster championship or the qualifiers.
There is a lot of reflection to be done. For instance, would the round-robin games the GPA proposes really command the kind of crowds the earlier rounds of the provincial championship do? Would their proposals make Croke Park redundant for the first half of the summer? You wonder have the GPA weighed up all these nuances.
By putting the issue on the table though, they have done both themselves and the GAA itself a service. A re-think is required. You could still run off your provincial championships in late April and all of May and still get at least a round of club championship games in. Or imagine the interest you’d have had this year in football if instead of having All-Ireland quarter-finals, the last eight teams had been broken up into two pools of four, with the top two in each group making it to the semi-finals. Kildare v Donegal one week, followed by Kildare v Kerry the next, then followed by Kildare v Mayo the next; serious football. At the moment the top teams don’t play each other often enough.
We don’t see the top hurlers enough either. Next year Henry Shefflin could eclipse Christy Ring and John Doyle by winning his ninth All-Ireland medal but it would only take him four games to do it. Just four games on national television; there’s not another sport in the world — well, perhaps Gaelic football — that showcases its star player so little.
There’s a way we can see more of Henry with Kilkenny while his James Stephens clubmates get to play plenty of championship games as well. And credit to the GPA for kick-starting a proper debate on what’s the best way to get the best of both worlds.
