Cassidy’s call to scrap provincial finals rebuked

ULSTER COUNCIL secretary Danny Murphy has delivered aveiled but stinging rebuke to Damien Cassidy who made headlines last week with his suggestion that the four provincial championships be abolished.

The Derry manager, speaking ahead of his side’s championship opener against Armagh on Sunday, called the current system “unfair” and suggested that someone should “face down” the four provincial councils in order to bring about change.

However, while he did not name Cassidy yesterday, Murphy’s message was clear when he pointed to the fact that Derry have failed to reach an Ulster final in 10 years. Their last title came two years prior to that.

“If you take it in the overall context, Ulster Championships are hard won,” said Murphy at the competition’s launch in Belfast.

“One of the people leading the charge to get rid of the provincial championship, as far as I know, haven’t been in an Ulster final for 10 years.

“To have not got to a provincial final in 10 years and then to have ambitions of an All-Ireland, I think would be totally out of the remit. Put all those facts together.

“Ulster is hard but if you are good enough and get beaten in Ulster, then you should really reestablish yourself and come in the other side.”

Cassidy is far from the first manager, player or official to call for a new championship structure – senior Croke Park officials have had similar ideas – but Murphy came armed with a handful of arguments against such a radical change yesterday.

“It is an argument that recycles itself every so often. An open draw would help the strong because most teams in Ulster can talk about winning the province.

“The number of teams who can say to their panel of players ‘if we work hard we can win the All-Ireland’ then we are probably talking about in one province no more than a couple of teams. If you take that to a logical conclusion you end up with three-quarters of the teams going into the championship thinking they can’t win it, which would defeat the purpose of any serious competition.

“Provincial champions have something achieved, which doesn’t impact on their right to win the All-Ireland.”

And yet the fact remains that obvious imbalances exist with one province containing only five counties and another that must cater for 12. Ulster may lie somewhere in between but it has long been singled out as the toughest of the four paths. Whether that has helped or hindered its nine participants in the long run is a moot point.

“There have been times where we have had four of the last eight in the All-Ireland and that reflects the strength of our province. There is a competitiveness between the provincial championships and the qualifiers.

“An open draw would introduce an entirely new concept which I believe would end up with very few teams highly motivated.”

Murphy believes the championship would lose appeal if games between Antrim and Cork or Galway-Wicklow were the norm in May and June.

“The GAA has carried out research in that area and – clearly – the number one thing that motivates people to go to games is local rivalry. If that is what the people want, then I think it would be very foolish of the GAA not to take that into account.”