Duffy: don’t close the backdoor system yet

GAA Director General Páraic Duffy has admitted that there are “inequities” in the structure of the senior football championship but he has also told advocates for change there are no easy means of ironing out the kinks.

All eight provincial finalists have exited the All-Ireland prior to the semi-final stage for the first time ever and that shock run of results has been followed by a predictable outcry from the losers’ ranks.

Mickey Harte, Jack O’Connor and Eamon O’Brien all poked holes in the championship structures before waving farewell to the summer last weekend and the Tyrone manager, not for the first time, made the case for provincial winners to be handed a second chance.

However, the word from Croke Park is that the association’s top brass won’t be making any knee-jerk reaction on the basis of one summer’s results and Duffy confirmed as much yesterday.

“I was involved in the qualifier the time it was brought in (in 2001),” said Duffy.

“They were never devised to give people a second chance. It was devised initially to make sure teams got more than one game in the championship.

“If you go back to the time it came in, the big complaint was that teams trained all winter, they lost one game and they were out of the championship. So, the original focus was to make sure every team got a minimum of two games, and it does that.”

Duffy added that the primary concern was to provide the best pathway for the country’s top eight teams to reach the quarter-finals and he pointed to modern trends in Connacht and Munster to support his theory that this has largely been the case.

While the Munster champions — Cork or Kerry, in other words — had reached the All-Ireland semi-final nine years in-a-row prior to 2010, their Connacht counterparts had done so only twice since the advent of the qualifier system.

“This year was unique. This is the first time ever that the four provincial champions have gone out at the quarter-final stage. On the law of averages, it was always going to happen some time. So, to change our structures because of that would probably be a mistake.”

The problem with the All-Ireland structure as it stands is that it will never be an entirely balanced and equitable competition as long as it caters for four provinces of different sizes, and Duffy made that very same point yesterday.

The lopsided nature of the championship was highlighted again last weekend when a Kildare team playing its sixth game in five weeks overcame a Meath side whose last competitive fixture had been the Leinster final three weeks earlier.

The difference between the front door and back is, clearly, a marked one. As it is, the provincial championships run from mid-May through to mid-July at a leisurely pace while four rounds of qualifiers are lumped together into a manic four-week window.

The solution appears simple on the surface: run the provinces off quicker and bring the qualifiers forward, thus allowing everyone a two-week break prior to the August Bank Holiday weekend and the quarter-finals.

Unfortunately, it would seem to be far more complicated than that, even if Duffy agrees with the basic concept that every side should be afforded at least a 13-day gap after playing in a provincial decider.

Playing the quarter-finals later than the August Bank Holiday weekend is not an option as things stand, as the rule book has effectively safeguarded the month of August for club activity, That leaves the earlier summer months.

Here, too, the GAA claims its hands are tied.

“We want to keep our games in the limelight from May to September,” said Duffy. “Kevin Walsh said, and it’s a valid point, that there should be a two-week gap between the provincial final and the quarter-finals.

“To do that, the four provincial finals have to be played on the same weekend. From a promotional point of view that would be suicidal, but that’s the only way of having the same gap for everybody.

“You would have the four provincial finals on the same Sunday. Two weeks later play the fourth round of the qualifiers, giving your beaten finalists their 13 days, then the provincial champions would have a three-week gap.”