Nobody’s griping about football now, nor its subscription channel coverage

We’re all paying for Eir, because our national broadcaster didn’t have the foresight or desire to recognise and harness the obvious potential of the National League, writes Mike Quirke.

There’s an odd phenomenon that attaches itself to the football side of the GAA world for this period of the season, but it only tends to linger for a couple of months. Suddenly, it vanishes again back from whence it came, and the negativity comes flooding back.

How many times have you heard commentators complain about the quality of Gaelic football in the past two weeks? That the game is dead or at the very least dying. Who have you heard tell us that football is no longer attractive, and supporters just don’t want to know about it anymore? Anyone?

The reason you haven’t heard that kind of talk, is because it’s not being said.

The national football leagues are again our saviour and beacon of hope for the future. For the majority, they represent the best inter-county competition of the year. The regular schedule of high-scoring, competitive games across all divisions brings about a complete cessation of negative talk. Instead, everybody is speaking about evenly matched teams, new players, old players, high-quality action, big crowds... everything that is good about Gaelic football, and we’ve seen it in abundance already.

Outside of what the Super 8’s may bring for the real contenders in August, this is unquestionably the most enjoyable time of the year as a supporter of Gaelic football, as it is for most of the players. As usual, the league is affording every county outside the usual suspects, across all four divisions, their most realistic opportunity to actually achieve something tangible. Whether that be to win the division, get promoted, or even survive the drop, the league provides something real for everybody. It allows teams to compete at a level appropriate to their own abilities. Who would have thought that having a competition that regularly pits evenly matched teams against one another would make sense?

The mind boggles that we still haven’t an appropriate championship system in place that allows counties to compete in something resembling a junior, intermediate and senior All-Ireland series. I know most of those counties have expressed a desire not to change to that type of a tiered system, but their logic remains lost on me. If it works so well for club action, I can’t fathom the reticence to try something similar at the next level.

For most counties, competing for Sam Maguire is only a pipe dream. These league weeks, however, offer much more justification for all the hard training and sacrifice the players make for the county jersey. This past weekend alone, the four divisions amassed 37 goals and 394 points, or a total of 505 points, over 16 games. That’s an average of 31.5 scores per game in the first weekend of February. Bear in mind, most of these games are being played on heavy sod, in wintry conditions not conducive to producing top-quality fare. Imagine what they would look like in the height of summer.

Given the quality and importance of these games, it’s still hard to understand the lack of appetite from our national broadcaster to showcase this competition in a manner more befitting its importance. I have listened to all the arguments about the GAA selling its soul along with the rights to championship games to Sky Sports and the knock-on implications to ordinary people, who are now unable to watch a certain amount of championship games from the comfort of their own homes without subscribing to Sky. I get it, but what I don’t understand is why we don’t have the same level of annoyance at the paltry coverage afforded to the national league competitions by RTÉ for so long. It’s been left to TG4 to carry the can and they’ve done a superb job bringing live and deferred National League action onto TV sets in every house in Ireland each Sunday afternoon.

RTÉ run a 60- or 90-minute highlight show on a Sunday night to cover every game that took place over the weekend in both hurling and football. At that, time restrictions dictate that the package focuses almost exclusively on the top-tier games and skips over most of the other significant storylines from the lower divisions. That lack of coverage does a real disservice to the quality of fare on offer and to every team sitting outside of the top division.

Following on from Setanta, Eir Sport has increased the exposure of the league to another level entirely with their high-quality production of live Saturday night fixtures, as well as their new glossy midweek highlight show. They’ve done a great service helping to turn the whole product into something more representative of the increased significance with which the modern league competition is held.

They took Saturday night National League games when they were available and unwanted, and they’ve turned them into something really positive for the association.

Of course, Eir Sport is not freely available to everybody. You must subscribe and pay for the privilege of getting your Saturday evening GAA fix, but it’s a service many are willing to fork out hard-earned money for if it affords the opportunity to watch more of these games.

For some reason, though, there hasn’t been anywhere near the same level of unrest over the Eir Sport deal compared to Sky, but both are two sides of the same coin, in my opinion.

It seems to me that RTÉ fell asleep behind the wheel of this growing National League monster and we’re all paying for Eir, because our national broadcaster didn’t have the foresight or desire to recognise and harness the obvious potential of this competition.

National League Football is not what it once was. No longer is it about using the games to just get guys fit. These games are seriously competitive, all action and in many cases, filled with quality. The competition continues to grow into a quality product deserving of more fulsome TV coverage and exposure.

If that means having to pay to watch a more expansive schedule of live games, then so be it.