McCartan offers alternative format to boost Championship

DOWN boss James McCartan has proposed a new structure for the football championship which, while safeguarding the four provincial competitions, would provide the radical overhaul that many believe is so necessary.

The issue, long a thorny one, has generated significant interest in recent weeks with Derry manager Damien Cassidy calling for a revolutionary open draw and senior GAA officials responding with a robust defence of the status quo.

GAA president Christy Cooney and Director General Páraic Duffy have admitted there are imbalances in the hurling and football championships but have consistently challenged their critics to come up with an acceptable alternative.

McCartan has made a good attempt at it.

“It is what it is,” he said yesterday. “We have to get on with it. I was going to say that it is the same for everybody but it is not. It is a strange sport that we play in that our league competition is deemed to be lesser than the cup competition.

“For example if Portsmouth win the FA Cup on Saturday, will they be seen as the best team in England?

“If we are all going to give our tuppence worth on what the Ulster championship should be, then we should have a league format where you could have one group of five and one group of four and then have a semi-final and final. Then every team is guaranteed two, three, four games and you still have your provincial final at the end of it and you still produce someone for an All-Ireland semi-final.”

One advantage with McCartan’s suggestion is that it would be flexible enough to meet the needs of all four provinces. While Ulster, and possibly Munster, could cater for two groups, one pool would suffice in Connacht and Leinster could operate with three.

The end result is all would be the same with two teams advancing through to their respective semi-finals or finals and, subsequently, the All-Ireland series. The All-Ireland qualifiers, which have already lost much of their appeal, would become obsolete.

It would be a similar story for the hurling championship which, with Galway and Antrim’s assimilation into Leinster, is now a two-pool competition anyway, although Cooney believes the exiting format is here to stay for some time in the small ball code.

A ‘Champions League’ type system, as suggested by McCartan, has been rejected by Croke Park on the basis that it would demand too many weekends to the detriment of the club game but McCartan believes disruption to the grassroots would be minimal.

There would also be a monetary appeal.

“There is revenue involved in that, instead of having one game on in Ulster every week, why isn’t there one in Celtic Park, one in Fermanagh, one in Armagh. Instead of taking up 10 weeks it could all be done in eight weeks and you get more games played and you still free up time for clubs because we don’t play two weeks before games anyway.”

Ulster secretary Danny Murphy responded to Cassidy’s comments earlier this week by suggesting they should be viewed in the context of Derry’s abysmal recent record in the province and Down have had just as little reason for cheer.

McCartan was part of the last team to claim the Anglo-Celt Cup for the county back in 1994 but the rookie inter-county manager has no beef with the draw for this year’s campaign which has handed them a tricky opening tie in Ballybofey on Sunday fortnight.

Down have won many new admirers thanks to their unbeaten run through the group stages of Division Two this year although defeat to Armagh in the final at Croke Park has led many observers to reappraise the county’s prospects of success this summer.

“We knew we weren’t as good as you boys in the media were saying,” said McCartan.

“We were disappointed with our performance in Croke Park and hopefully we are somewhere in between. We are not going to win the All-Ireland this year but, at the same time, if we come up against one of the major contenders, I would hope that we would be able to have a say in it.”