Flanagan calls for change to championship structure

Sligo manager Pat Flanagan has urged the GAA to ‘take a serious look’ at how the football championship is scheduled and structured.

Flanagan’s Sligo side exited the Connacht championship at the hands of Galway on Saturday. But, without a competitive game since their final Division 3 game against Roscommon on April 6, Flanagan said his side struggled to find the required intensity needed for summer football.

And the former Westmeath boss also called for the Football Review Committee’s proposed eight-team provincial system to be implemented as soon as possible.

“It’s been 16 weeks [the Roscommon game was 11 weeks ago] since we had a competitive match and we need to look at that going forward,” said Flanagan.

“I think the sooner that we look serious at how championship is run the better. We look at black cards and silly things like that [and it’s] destroying our game. But the bottom line in my opinion is we need to look at getting eight teams into four different provinces.

“I think Mayo started the championship in May and it’s not going to finish until September. No other championship is ever going to go that long in the world,” he said.

But Sligo also appeared to struggle late on in the game when a few of their players returning from injury seemed to run out of legs.

Alan Mulholland elected to hold his injured stars on the sideline, but Flanagan admitted he had no option but to throw them straight into a championship battle.

“It seemed to catch upon us a little but, obviously Charlie Harrison had a serious injury he got against Offaly, in the second or third round of the league. He really only came back training a fortnight or three weeks ago.

“Adrian Marren has been out for the last three weeks, Brian Curran had been out for the last six weeks. They’re serious senior players and not to have them fully fit was a little bit of a disadvantage. And now Pat Hughes has an ankle ligament injury so we’re not sure how serious that is.

“But they want to go into the qualifiers and give it a good rattle,” he said.