Duffy satisfied with Championship structure

GAA Director General Paraic Duffy has expressed his satisfaction with the current football Championship structure, despite calls for a review after none of the provincial finalists qualified for the upcoming All-Ireland SFC semi-finals.

Kerry manager Jack O'Connor, Tyrone boss Mickey Harte and their Meath counterpart Eamonn O'Brien have suggested making tweaks to the Championship format, but the word from GAA headquarters is that there will not be a knee-jerk reaction based on this summer's results.

Duffy feels that the qualifier system was never devised on the basis of giving teams a second chance, but more on the premise that it gave counties a second game - and that after all their efforts in training, it did not just come down to partaking in a single Championship match.

"I was involved in the qualifiers the time they were brought in (back in 2001)," he said.

"The first thing I would say about the qualifiers was 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 they 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."

The Monaghan native was also keen to add that the qualifier system helped ensure that the best eight teams in the county reached the All-Ireland quarter-final stage each year.

"The second thing is there are two ways of qualifying for the All-Ireland series, which is a separate competition. You can qualify by the provincial Championship route or by the qualifier series and the best eight teams presumably qualify for the All-Ireland series which is a knockout competition.

"It's a separate competition so at that stage, would it be fair to give the provincial champions a second chance and not give the other teams a second chance in the provincial series? So that's the rationale behind it.

"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."

Responding to the comments made by O'Connor and Harte, Duffy claimed that it was unfair to change the structure based on results in the 2010 Championship alone.

"The other point I'd make about Jack O'Connor's comments is that in the last 10 years since the qualifiers began, this is the first time that the Munster champions haven't qualified for the semi-finals. So nine times out of 10, the Munster champions have made the semi-finals," he explained

"In fairness to Mickey Harte, he has raised this issue before and he feels it is unfair, but it's impossible to have a totally fair system given that different provinces have different sizes and so on. I think it would be wrong to make a decision based on one year."

And the GAA cannot play the All-Ireland quarter-finals later than the August Bank Holiday weekend, 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," added Duffy.

"(The Sligo manager) 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."