How to inject some bite into tired footballing summers with a new format

Like a lot of offices, there was plenty of chat in the New Graphic workplace about the underwhelming start to this year’s football championship.

The difference is the New Graphic lads decided to do something about it. Eamonn O’Sullivan, Diarmuid Slattery, and Dave Garavin all had an interest in Gaelic football and given the day job, they decided to offer an alternative vision. Their two options feature home-and-away group stages — eight groups of four and four groups of eight, plus New York in one of those — before progression to the last 16, quarter-, semi-finals and finals.

“Periodically the topic of the format of the Football Championship would come up,” explained Diarmuid Slattery, “whether it was at a cold league match in February or in anticipation (or lack of) for the coming summer’s Championship.