Kelly: Time to shake up lopsided football format

Former GAA president Seán Kelly believes the need to implement his proposal to change the structure of the All-Ireland senior football championship has intensified following the lopsided results in recent weeks.

An Irish Examiner study today reveals the average margin of victory/defeat in the opening 13 games of the competition excluding Leitrim v New York has crept over 10 points.

Kelly has called for the Championship to be split into two cups following the completion of the four provincial campaigns.

The Fine Gael MEP wants to link the league and Championship with a county’s NFL finish influencing whether they compete in the Sam Maguire or Tommy Murphy Cup (16 teams in each competition).

The Sam Maguire Cup will be played for by the two finalists in each provincial championship (4 x 2 teams) with the other eight teams in year one being selected on their finishing place in the National League.

After year one, the Tommy Murphy Cup winners and runners-ups would qualify for the Sam Maguire Cup with the best six placed teams in the league then making up the 16.

Like the Tommy Murphy Cup, the premier All-Ireland competition would be played on a straight knock-out open format but with the provincial winners guaranteed home advantage.

Having watched three avalanche victories, two for Kerry and one for Cork, not to mention Dublin’s win over Westmeath, Kelly has never been more certain his system is badly required.

“It reconfirms what I proposed last year and I believe it is the only way for the GAA to go with the football championship. The gap between the top and the bottom is widening despite all the great work in initiatives like development squads and reforming competitions down to schools level.

“A lot of counties have made a huge effort, some have got outside managers in, gone close to winning something, he goes and then they are worse off than they were before.

“Because of population and finance, which is just as if not more important, a two-tier structure should be introduced.

“Finance is so crucial because there are teams, be they Kilkenny in hurling or Kerry in football, who are able to raise funds on the back of their success and tradition.

“What I have proposed would give everybody a chance at winning something. The bottom team has more of an opportunity to beat the 17th team in the country than the first.

“It would be worth going with for three or four years. I’m still 100% certain it would make a major difference and home advantage, where possible, would go to the weaker counties.”

To combat the one-sided encounters as seen this and last month, Kelly would also suggest the provincial councils possibly seed their competitions.

Eugene McGee’s Football Review Committee (FRC) will shortly reconvene to complete the second part of their remit, the structure of national football competitions.

McGee, having received Kelly’s proposal, spoke with him briefly about it at Congress in Derry in March and the pair will talk again shortly.

FRC member Tim Healy has already backed Kelly’s idea to link the league with the Championship. A FRC-endorsed proposal is likely to go to Congress next March.

Kelly feels the disparity between teams in the Championship has got so great that the qualifiers are of little value to the smaller counties.

“People talk about the element of surprise in the knock-out championship. The backdoor has turned that on its head. The element of surprise is for the strong counties to get re-motivated and re-organised so that they don’t get beaten again.

“If Kerry are beaten in the Munster final next month they’ll regroup and cop themselves on and say, ‘Let’s not lose another one’.

“Using hurling as an example, last year when I heard that Galway had won the Leinster final I knew that Kilkenny would be forewarned and forearmed. People thought I was blackguarding but I wasn’t. If I was a manager with ambitions to win an All-Ireland now I’d be putting out a weakened team in the provincial championship and holding the aces back until they’re needed.

“That goes for both games but especially football. Hurling is slightly different because if you beat a team once you should be able to beat them a second time.”

Kelly appreciates critics will feel he is trying to rehash his brainchild, the much-maligned Tommy Murphy Cup.

But Kelly, who introduced the celebrated All-Ireland junior and intermediate club competitions, maintains it is a cup that would create a level playing ground for weaker football counties.

“It would have worked but it needed a bit of tweaking. This might be seen as a progression of it. There were counties who won it and they had something to show for themselves. Tipperary were one county, Wicklow and Antrim others.

“Why should these counties now be putting in all this effort, the same as the top counties, and continue being cannon fodder for the big guns every year?”