Munster chief Leddy: Provincial Councils happy to embrace change
the provinces want to retain the status quo. That supporting anything radical would amount to turkeys voting for Christmas.
In fact, three of the four have backed the idea of the football championship commencing with four provincial conferences of eight teams, something that would be revolutionary. Even the exception, Ulster’s Brian McAvoy, acknowledged: “Any change however must be for the overall betterment of the association.”
the provinces can hold their counties to ransom. “I think the Scottish board may have more votes than the four provincial councils,” says Munster GAA secretary Kieran Leddy. “It’s the counties who decide the fixtures. We’re not in a position where we bring all the counties together the week before votes.”
the provinces are only about their competitions, that they will cease to matter should regional championship be discontinued. Leinster’s Michael Reynolds touched on why that theory is a fallacy and Leddy will present more evidence for the defence later.
But what is true is the provinces’ competitions have never been in more peril. While the Munster senior hurling championship has hardly been in better shape, the threat to the U20 competition and Leinster’s was addressed by Leddy in his report to last night’s annual convention in Ennis.
Cynics may interpret his, Reynolds and Connacht’s John Prenty’s support for redrawing the provincial lines as plumping for the lesser of two evils but there is an acceptance that the football championship as it stands can no longer remain unchanged.
“I can’t really turn around and say the Munster senior hurling championship has to stay but everything else can go,” says Leddy.
“I made the point in my report that Connacht and Ulster have had three different winners over the last five years and they are competitive.
“You can understand why they would want to retain them but the question is do we keep them, albeit re-engineered under a slightly different model. I think everyone (provincial secretaries) is of the view that if you move the provincial championships to the spring and the League becomes the Championship at that stage you may as well remove the provincial championships altogether because I’m not sure what interest counties would have in them at that stage. I could see them rapidly losing interest in that.”
For all the inequalities of provincial competitions, the beauty about them is compelling: proximity. As the late Ulster GAA secretary Danny Murphy said simply: “At the end of the day, what you need is competitive games that are relatively close to the people who are going to them.”
Leddy appreciates that truism better than most: “From a purely geographical view, it makes sense to have regional competitions — especially at club level. It wouldn’t make sense for a club from Cork to play a club from Derry in the first round of an All-Ireland competition and that’s the same for minor and U20 as well.
“Hurling has addressed the issues that were there as Galway has moved into the Leinster senior championship and I think everybody would respect that it and the Munster championship work well as regional competitions. You have the rivalry side of it, which is what regional competitions give you.
“The problem with football, particularly in Munster and Leinster, is that there is an imbalance, although it’s fair to say Cork are making good strides. But it should be borne in mind that the provincial football championships in both are structured in such a way to give the weaker counties a better chance.”
Were all provincial competitions to be swallowed by national ones, it’s not as if Leddy would be out of a job nor the Munster Council offices in Castletroy suddenly shut down.
“Michael Reynolds referenced it in his report that there is a lot more to provincial councils than provincial competitions. Even if the provincial competitions went in the morning, all of the big games still have to be organised. There will still have to be event planning, stewarding, meetings with gardaí and so on.
“Say, for example, the Kerry-Mayo (Super 8) game in Killarney last year, which had a crowd of 30,000. The Munster Council ran that game in terms of stewarding, event planning and being on the ground on the day. That would have been the same for the U20 hurling final in the Gaelic Grounds and the Galway v Mayo (All-Ireland SFC) qualifier there as well. Increasingly, that is becoming a role for the council in assisting counties run those events because we have the resources.
“Then there is the whole Games development mechanism that exists. We have 27 GDA (games development administrators) in the province and all of that has to be managed and there will likely be a greater input into that from provinces as time goes on.
“The whole area of club property, club borrowings, the roll-out of the corporate trust model. Every application for borrowing, purchasing or leasing comes through the provincial council first and then it’s prepared as a submission and sent to Croke Park.
“Then there is the club development grant scheme. Last year we received €650,000 from Central Council and topped it by approximately €700,000 and that was administered entirely by the provincial council. Making fixtures has become a very small part of the work of a provincial council nowadays. Increasingly, provincial councils have a more developmental and overseeing role and reporting back into Central Council.”
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