New League and Championship Format

[Dont Matter]

Easier to understand version further down the thread.

Ok here's my proposal for a new improved All Ireland championship. One that will mean we keep the Provincial championships, have a straight knock out competition and teams still get more Summer games.

For the league we use what used to be the All Ireland championship. Straight knock out for the Provincial championships and it goes through to the semi final and final to decide the winner.
The only difference is the losers of first and second round games in their province go into a league together to decide the Division 4 champions. 16 teams in that are split into 4 groups. Top teams in each group play semi finals and finals and the position you finish in your group will decide your seeding for the championship draw.
The semi final losers go into a 2 groups together and go through the same process as Division 4 and this will decide the Division 3 champions, 4 teams in each group.
The 4 Provincial final losers have an open draw, winners are Division 2 champions and then obviously whoever goes through unbeaten will win the National league.

I will use last years championship for an example, sometimes people can understand this way better. Just to reiterate, teams that lost the first round or quarter finals in their Provincial Championships will be Division 4. Lost semi final then Division 3, lost final Division 2 and whoever wins it outright is Division 1 champs.

Using last years Munster championship they will split into 4 Divisions. Waterford and Tipperary are in Division 4 because they lost in the quarter finals of the Munster championship. Kerry and Limerick are Division 3 because they lost in the semi final of the Munster championship. Clare are in Division 2 because they lost the Munster final. Cork are Division 1 because they won the Munster championship. Instead of playing a quarter final like last year, Cork go straight into a semi final to play Donegal because there is no qualifiers. This is the new league format, I'm only using last years championship as an example.
Munster Senior Football Championship
Division 4: Waterford + Tipperary
Division 3: Kerry + Limerick
Division 2: Clare
Division 1: Cork

The teams are split like this for the same reasons as the Munster championship.
Leinster Senior Football Championship
Division 4: Westmeath, Laois, Wicklow, Louth, Longford, Carlow, Offaly
Division 3: Wexford, Kildare
Division 2: Meath
Division 1: Dublin

Connacht Senior Football Championship
Division 4: Rosscommon, London
Division 3: Galway, Leitrim
Division 2: Sligo
Division 1: Mayo

Ulster Senior Football Championship
Division 4: Cavan, Derry, Armagh, Antrim, Fermanagh
Division 3: Monaghan, Tyrone
Division 2: Down
Division 1: Donegal

Now all the Division 4 teams go into a random draw.
Random draw for Division 4:
Group 1
London
Rosscommon,
Louth,
Cavan,

Group 2
Armagh,
Waterford
Longford,
Carlow,

Group 3
Antrim,
Derry,
Offaly
Tipperary

Group 4
Laois,
Fermanagh
Westmeath,
Wicklow,

Then the winners of group 1 and 2 play eachother and 3 and 4 play eachother. Winner of the next game is Division 4 champs.
So something like Louth v Armagh and Derry v Laois. Then Armagh v Laois final, Billy Sheehan gets the winning goal in the last minute but then McKeever hits him a flying kick. So Laois are Division 4 champs.
For Division 3 it's the same only 2 groups.

Random draw for Division 3:
Group 1
Limerick
Wexford,
Monaghan,
Kerry

Group 2
Galway,
Leitrim
Kildare
Tyrone
Maybe a Kerry v Tyrone final.

Random draw for Division 2:
Group 1
Sligo
Clare

Group 2
Down
Meath
A Down v Sligo final or whatever.

Division one last year would have resulted in Donegal winning. They went through their province winning so under my proposal they would pick up the Anglo-Celt Cup. Mayo would have won the J. J. Nestor Cup, Dublin would have won the Delaney Cup and Cork would have won the Munster cup, whatever it's called. Then the league semi finals and final would have been like this:
Semi Finals                        Final
Cork    1-11            
Donegal    0-16                  Donegal 2-11
                               
Mayo    0-19                  Mayo      0-13
Dublin    0-16    

You all following so far?

So to summarise, the new league format will decide who the 4 Provincial champions are. They will get their Provincial cup and celebrate. Also we will have Division one to four decided. It will also decide the seeding for the Championship draw which I will explain now.

In the division 4 groups of the league the bottom two teams in each division will be fourth seeds for the championship. The top 2 teams in each group will be third seeds.
All the teams in Division 3 will be second seeds and all the teams in Division 2 and 1 will be first seeds. If you want an easier draw make sure you do better in next years league.

Ok I'm not using last years championship for this example, I just picked 8 teams for each seeding. Then put them in random result.com to do the draw for me. It worked out like this:

Kerry
Carlow

Derry
London

Galway
Waterford

Tyrone
Antrim

Kildare
Longford

Donegal
Fermanagh

Cork
Offaly

Meath
Wexford

Mayo
Leitrim

Dublin
Clare

Limerick
Wicklow

Sligo
Cavan

Westmeath
Armagh

Tipperary
Louth

Laois
Rosscommon

Down
Monaghan

Then you go through the first round, the second round, the quarter finals, semi finals and final to see who's the All Ireland Champion.
To make sure everyone gets some Summer football we have an extra thing, kinda like the Tommy Murphy cup etc.
The losers of all the round of 32 games will go into an open draw and they play out to see who wins that competition. It'll be called the Jody Devine Cup.
The second round losers are put in an open draw and they play off for their competition we'll call it the Ger Houlahan Cup.
The quarter final losers play for the Vinnie Murphy Cup.
No point having competitions after that or we might even drop the Vinnie Murphy Cup.

The overview:
We still have the National League Divisions 1-4. We still have all 4 Provincial Championships. We still have all the teams getting games in the Summer. We now have a World Cup type format, all the teams have to win an equal amount of games to become All Ireland Champions. We are back to having straight knock out championships where it's do or die.

What you think?

[qubdub]

i think you need to get out more

[Dont Matter]

Typical Dub. This took me about an hour and a half to do, the least you could do is read it.

[Farrandeelin]

qubdub is an Ulsterman I think!

[Dont Matter]

Oh, maybe he can't read so.


Only messin.

[Dont Matter]

I've edited it a few times to try to make it as simple as I can for everyone to understand. People probably still don't. Anyway it makes sense to me, at least that's one person.

[Jinxy]

I've a headache.
Give me the gist of it.

[Throw ball]

I gave up reading when you mentioned Ciaran McKeever. You have some fascination with him. Am sure a few Cullyhanna posters could arrange a meeting or autograph for you!

[BennyHarp]

And I thought The Voice was complicated! 

[heffo]

wtf

[Jinxy]

Don't forget the hamster based system for televised draws.

[Rossfan]

Don't Matter must be from Tyrone as that is real close season time filler.
The rest of us are thinking about our teams' chances in the Championship.

[Dont Matter]

Well that idea has gone down well.
Ok here's the shortened version. Edit: Turns out it wasn't much shorter but it should be easier.
The National league will begin in Feburary as usual. It will have the 4 provincial championships.
So the Leinster championship as it's normally played, the Munster cvhampionship as it's normally played, same with the Connacht and the Ulster championship.
The 4 winners of each province go into the National league semi finals. The winners of the semi finals go into the national league final. The winner of this is the National Football league division 1 champion.
Ok, everyone understand that?

While that is going ahead the other Divisions will also be played.
Teams that get knocked out in the first round and quarter final of their provincial championship will be in division 4. Thats every team that got knocked out in the munster, ulster, connacht or leinster championship first round or semi final. That will add up to 16 teams. They will be split up into 4 groups. The winners of each group will go to a semi final and final to decide who is the division 4 champion.
Ok?

Every team that got knocked out in their provincial championship semi final will be in division 3. So the teams that lost the ulster semi final, the munster semi final and the connacht and leinster semi finals will all go into division 3. Thats 8 teams. 2 groups of 4. The winner of the two groups will play eachother in the national football league division 3 final.
Yes?

Every team defeated in their provincial championship final will be in division 2. So if you lose the leinster final youre in division 2, same with other provinces. There is only 4 provincial final losers, there will be an open draw and they play 3 matches to decide the division 2 champions. 2 semi finals and a final.
Even Offaly people should be following so far.

Division one is what i explained at the start. That is the National league explained. Nothing to do with the championship yet, just the national league.

Now if you've followed this far, you should follow this.
There was 16 teams in division 4 of the league. They were split into 4 groups, with 4 teams in each group. The bottom 2 in each of those 4 groups will be seeded 4th in the draw for the championship. Thats 8 teams.
Example:
Clare        6 points
Limerick    4 points
Leitrim      2 points
Antrim       0 points

Leitrim and antrim will be seeded 4th in the championship draw as they were in the bottom two in their group. It's the same for 3 other groups.
The top 2 in all the division 4 groups will be seeded 3rd. In the above group clare and limerick will be 3rd seeds. It will be the same in 3 other groups.

I explained division 3 earlier. There was 2 groups with 4 teams in it. All of these teams will be seeded 2nd. They will be second seeds.

Division 2 was all the provincial final losers, all of these teams will be seeded first. They will be first seeds.
All the teams that won their provincial championship will also be seeded first. Every provincial champion will be seeded first.

I'm pretending you're all 5 year olds, trying to make it as simple as i can. It better be working.

Right, its time for the championship draw. We have our seedings. 8 teams are seeded 1st. 8 teams are seeded 2th, 8 teams are seeded 3rd and 8 teams are seeded 4th.

The championship will be like the soccer world cup knock out rounds. So the second round all the way to the final.
First, all the teams seeded 1st will be put in a bowl and all the teams seeded 4th will be put in a bowl. A person (usually a weird looking provincial secretary or something) will pick one team out of the bowl with all the first seeds in it. Then another person will pick one team out of the bowl with all the division 4 teams in it.
The team drawn out of the bowl with all the division one teams in it will play the team picked out of the bowl with all the division 4 teams in it.
This will be repeated until we have 8 first seeds drawn to play 8 4th seeds. Everyone should understand so far.

Then we will do the same again except the bowls will have the teams seeded 2nd and the teams seeded 3rd. So all the teams seeded 2nd will be in one bowl and all the teams seeded 3rd will be in the other bowl. They will be drawn out one by one until we have 8 2nd seeds drawn against 8 3rd seeds.

All these draws, ie the 1st seeds v 4th seeds and 2nd seeds v 3rd seeds will be the round of 32. The winners of each match will go onto the second round.
In the second round there will be 16 teams left, 8 matches. The winners of these 8 matches will go onto the quarter finals.
The quarter final will have 8 teams. 4 matches. Winners of these go to the semi finals.
In the semi finals there'll be 4 teams, 2 matches. Winners go to the All Ireland final.
Whoever wins the All Ireland final will be crowned All Ireland football champions.
Simple isn't it?

To make sure every team gets summer matches we will have this system. All the teams knocked out in the round of 32. That's all the teams beaten by the other team in the first round of the All ireland championship will be put into an open draw. There will be 16 teams, that means 8 matches. Winners of each match will go onto the quarter finals, they'll be 8 teams in this. The winners of that will go to the semi final. I'm sure you all know this now.

The teams knocked out in the second round will do something similar, except there'll be 8 teams. So they'll just have a quarter final, a semi final and a final.

That's it. I can't make it any easier. I didn't put capitol letters in and the spelling is probably awful but i dont care. Just tell me you understand this basic concept.

[Dont Matter]

Don't Matter must be from Tyrone as that is real close season time filler.
The rest of us are thinking about our teams' chances in the Championship.

4 weeks till we play football again. Need something to fill in time. Not Tyrone though.

[Hardy]

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/1206571