Ulster chief hails provincial format

ULSTER COUNCIL chairman Tom Daly has claimed this year’s football championship is proof that the existing provincial format should be retained.

Ulster aside, the championship has largely failed to capture the imagination thus far with games of poor quality and little in the way of entertainment being played against a backdrop of half-empty stadiums.

That has again led to some hand-wringing over the format of the championship with traditionalists and more radical observers offering very different solutions but Daly is in no doubt that, like the Munster hurling championship, the Ulster football championship should be a ring-fenced national treasure.

“So far for in 2008 we have had an exhilarating Ulster senior football championship,” said Daly in yesterday’s programme notes in Clones. “This has once again demonstrated the intensity of Ulster football and the value which counties place on winning the Anglo-Celt Cup.

“It is a magnificent endorsement of the provincial championship format, re-enforced by the public interest shown by our big attendances.

“The emergence of Fermanagh as Ulster finalists for the first time in two decades will provide us with a final which will be eagerly awaited.”