New All Ireland system vote this weekend

[seafoid]

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/green-proposal-for-football-championship-reform-likely-to-get-green-light-1.4782418
Seán Moran

This morning's Central Council meeting is likely to favour the green proposal for football championship reform.
 

 

This morning's Central Council meeting is expected to start the process for a new football championship, which will be introduced in 2023. Before the delegates are two proposals - red and green - to reform the All-Ireland.

Both provide for additional summer matches for counties but the latter retains the central role of the provincial championships in the GAA calendar as opposed to banishing them to the early months of the year and replacing them with the league as foundation of the summer championship.

The green proposal is overwhelmingly favoured to secure the backing for submission to next month's congress where it is likely to be passed. This morning it's on the cards that the red alternative will be dropped without discussion.

One well-placed source said, "if it went to congress in the morning, I think it (green) would get 70 per cent."

Both blueprints include the Tailteann Cup, the new Tier 2 championship that is being introduced this year under the current format.

There are two critical concerns. One is that the previous attempt at round robin matches, the Super 8s, wasn't a success and secondly, for the Tailteann Cup to succeed, players need to engage with it and experience of Tier 2 competitions hasn't been positive in that regard.

Hopes are however high that the current proposal can achieve progress on both of those fronts, as the football championship opened up in 2021 and players have been increasingly looking for the realistic competitive context of a graded championship in recent years.

The genesis of both proposals before Central Council is last October's special congress at which Option B, a league-based championship, got a razor thin majority, well short of the required 60 per cent.

As change was in the air, a task force was dispatched to come up with a version that would prove agreeable to the broadest swathe of GAA opinion. They settled on an idea, originally floated 10 years ago by former association president, Seán Kelly.

That is the green proposal, with its four round-robin All-Ireland groups, based on a combination of final placings in provincial championships and national league.

The 16 counties who don't make it proceed to the Tailteann Cup, which mirrors the Sam Maguire structure.

The first objective of the task force that produced the proposals was to define what principles should inform their work or what purpose the championship should serve for the best interests of the GAA.

Distilled, those principles were: raising the standard by providing more games at an appropriate level for all teams but especially developing counties; retaining positive aspects of the current system; avoiding dead rubbers, fitting the available footprint; retaining current opportunities to be a winner and give all teams a chance of winning Sam Maguire; be easy to understand and have public acceptance.

[Hound]

Looks like the Green Proposal will be coming into force for 2023. "Everyone" seems to be in favour of it.

Anyone got a link to the full detail of it? I can only find summaries which don't tell the full story:

The Green Proposal would create an All-Ireland round robin system. This Sam Maguire competition would be made up of eight provincial finalists and the top eight league teams that haven't made provincial finals. The 16 counties would be split into four pools.

Personally not a fan of Champions League style (although happy to give this a go) as round robin will inevitably lead to dead rubbers, so they've tried to reduce this by allowing up to 3 teams in each group to qualify. Also I think the top teams get a bye, so an advantage to coming top of the group. I presume the four 2nd place teams would play the four 3rd place teams (home advantage for the 2nd place teams would make sense to give some advantage to coming 2nd rather than 3rd), with the winners advancing to the QFs to play the four group winners.

The order would be
1. League (7 games each)
2. Provincial championships (between 1 and 4 games)
3. Round robin Sam (minimum 3 games)

The provincial championships being in the middle leaves the interesting scenario that teams don't know how high in the league they need to finish to claim a place in Sam, e.g. "Derry have just been knocked out of Sam because Sligo have just surprised Roscommon in the Connacht semi-final" could be a scenario (but that's probably looking at things in an overly negative way).

The 16 that don't make the Sam competition go into a similar Tailteann Cup competition I think.
There was some talk that the winners of the latter would automatically be in the Sam Round robin the following year, but not sure if that is part of the final plan.

[Rossfan]

https://m.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/green-plan-to-reform-all-ireland-senior-football-championship-gets-green-light-41268042.html

Letting NY automatically into the Tailteann Qtr Finals....
How will the 7 others be got from the 16 Counties in the Group stages?