Tyrone convention: Streamlined championship

Tyrone secretary Dominic McCaughey has called on the Ulster Council to streamline the provincial football championship and abandon the tradition of playing just one game each week.

McCaughey wants to see a new-look Anglo Celt Cup series, and the competition played off in a shorter time-frame.

“Club fixtures could be planned much more effectively if the Ulster Council were to confine its football championship into a much shorter period of time,” he says in his annual report. “Additional dates would then be made available for counties to use for their club fixtures and this could be achieved by playing more than one fixture on every weekend in May and June, and by decreasing the time gap between the provincial semi-finals and final.”

And he praised Croke Park’s decision to introduce a two-sided draw for the All-Ireland qualifiers, hailing the initiative as a boost to the club scene.