Sixteen teams, not eight, should be jostling for league
For most teams in Division One and Two it is their third most important competition. A league would mean a lot to Tyrone this year but not as much as an Anglo-Celt Cup and an Anglo-Celt Cup wouldn’t mean as much as a Sam Maguire.
Then if you’re in Division Four it is the most important competition. Anyone who has read Damian Lawlor’s terrific account of the Waterford footballers in 2009 will know that they were working on the dream of promotion to Division Three, not beating Cork that summer.
A Clare or Tipperary footballer similarly knows that realistically they’re a few years away yet from tripping up Munster’s Old Firm and that the backdoor is a lottery. In the 2012 qualifiers Tipp got a couple of home draws and ended up reaching the last 12, but knowing that still didn’t make them a top 12 team. You might actually be better the year you draw Tyrone in the first round of the qualifiers than the one you get Offaly at home, but your championship can’t measure that progression. Your league invariably does.
Mick O’Dwyer’s maxim that ultimately only one competition counts in this game may have had validity in a different time or with a different team, but not with a Clare in Division Four.
Be honest though, unless you’re from one of those counties, you won’t be paying much interest to Division Four. You won’t even be closely following Division Two, even though whoever its top two or three teams along with Donegal could similarly contend for All Ireland semi-final slots.
All eyes these days and years are on Division One. Too much so, actually. As Dara Ó Cinnéide observed in these pages yesterday, a little bit of satellite television hyperbole has transmitted itself to all forms of media and at times you’d think it’s the championship or even the Premier League they’re covering.
Last spring Kerry and Mayo each lost four consecutive league games. Papers ran double-page spreads about how Eamonn Fitzmaurice and James Horan were “under pressure”, their teams and counties “in crisis”.
Both teams would prove to be Dublin’s stiffest challengers in the summer.
The league is never as important as it seems in February and March. Yet it is never as irrelevant as it may seem in May or June.
Last year relegated Down beat promoted Derry in Ulster — but lost to them in the qualifiers. Donegal also saw off Tyrone and Down in Ulster and we dismissed their national league form, but later events revealed there was a tale in their respective leagues.
Every league game has some significance. Kerry and Mayo each planned and tried hard to win each of those four games they lost on the trot last spring. They blooded in and found some players: Fionn Fitzgerald, Cathal Carolan. The games they won were little markers too. Kerry beat Cork in Tralee and in the summer would beat them in Killarney. The past three seasons Mayo have beaten the defending All-Ireland champions in Croke Park — and in round six of the league at home. Likewise, the past three seasons the team that has ended their All-Ireland dream also beat them earlier that year in the league.
The biggest problem with the current league is that too few teams can win it, too few are actually in it. The sides in Division Two should also be going for the same trophy as the sides in Division One. Sixteen teams instead of just eight should be competing for it.
One of the biggest omissions of the recent FRC report was its failure to review or even comment on whether doing away with Division 1A and 1B in favour of a Division One and Two format was actually better for the game and league.
It was all the more surprising and disappointing given its chairman Eugene McGee had been on the old FDC committee that introduced the Division 1A-1B model for the 2000 season. That heralded a terrifically competitive period for the competition and football itself over the following seven seasons. In 2001 the likes of Sligo and Roscommon contested the Division One semi-finals and were very competitive in that year’s championship.
In 2003 it was the same with Laois and Fermanagh, in 2004, Limerick. Wexford reached a league final in 2005. What was wrong with any of that? The revised league format has shaped as much as reflected that divide between the top six or so teams in the country and the rest. It’s also lowered the profile of teams in the second tier, of the sport itself in those counties.
We should be even more excited about this league, wondering whether a Meath or Galway could come along and reach a Division One semi-final, not whether they’ll make the Division Two final.
Imagine the variety and freshness that would bring to this year’s Division One.
Yet even then it wouldn’t mean as much as Division Four will to Leitrim and Clare.
