Has the intercounty system in football told us all it’s ever going to tell us?

[sid waddell]

AI is an easily marketable product regardless of the time of year.

April to June is perhaps the worst possible time to market All-Ireland championships

The soccer season is coming to an end, Champions League, Premier League etc., Heineken Cup in rugby,

And World Cups and Euros every second year, which obliterate everything else

It's a very crowded time of year

I remember in '94, Dublin played Kildare, a fixture which had drawn over 60k the previous two years, it was on the same day as Ireland v Italy, it drew 22k, the replay drew around the same

Tradition dies hard

The October NBA finals, with the Lakers and LeBron, were the lowest rated in many years this year

The November US Masters didn't work at all in my view

There's even something off about August All-Irelands, never mind June

September is the time for All-Irelands, October would be better than August

[sid waddell]

😂doesn't take much to engender aggression from you Angelo. Read my lips🤦🏻‍♂️ . I'm offering a solution to cement Intercounty and club for all. We'll not be far away from that in the new arrangements, but a further enhancement by giving every county in the country competitive football at their own level and a chance to progress. Counties Throwing good money after bad, on preparing for meaningless championship fixtures makes no sense to me. A tiered system allows the county season to be run off quicker and is likely to enhance the revenue  generated from a compacted county season . Like club football if you want to upgrade, you work hard you invest and the cream comes to the top.
I think where the county game can learn from
The club game, is that you must recognise and market all tiers. A club JFC victory is massive for a club with big crowds relatively speaking , county boards promote these completions and they've genuine kudos . GAA centrally put nowhere near enough effort promoting lower tiers eg Christy Ring.
Imagine the pride in léitrim developing a team to win a senior B title and getting a crack at Senior A the following year. It engenders genuine and realistic incentives to all counties. And "lesser" counties can cut their cloth for a compacted season , depending on their ambitions.
Not club v county, it should be club + county. Great times ahead

B championships and the like have been talked about at inter county level for years, there have been B competitions, there used to be an All-Ireland B competition back in the 1990s, there used to be the Tommy Murphy Cup

And they've never worked

But what did work was Fermanagh and Wexford and Tipperary reaching an All-Ireland semi-final, and Leitrim winning a Connacht title, because it was the real thing, or Wicklow beating Down in 2009, or Longford beating Mayo in 2010

Even in hurling, the lower competitions have done nothing for Antrim, Offaly, Laois - nothing at all, the best they can hope for is to be yo-yo counties

These proposed B and C competitions will create a vicious cycle where whole counties will just give up

And these competitions will never be marketed, you can't market a turd

People simply won't care

Leitrim and Waterford are not going to care about a B competition, they're not going to win it anyway

I think Sligo's Neil Ewing was correct a couple of years back - the current NFL format has not been good for a lot of weaker counties - maybe the best thing would be to go back to a 16 team Division 1 and Division 2, each split in half equally

It would give a more even standard of football for all rather than the current lopsided structure - that's key in giving mid ranking counties a chance to improve, ie. Meath and Kildare - Meath are straight back down to Division 2 now after seven defeats out of seven

[Rossfan]

Not good enough for D1.
So we add in 8 more teams to D1.
Sure why not put all 32 in D1?
Don't have a "B" because Leitrim* or Waterford won't win it so keep them in the A ......

* Leitrim did win the AI "B" about 30 years ago and subsequently ran Ros close in Connacht culminating in winning it in 94.
All started with the B win.

[sid waddell]

Not good enough for D1.
So we add in 8 more teams to D1.
Sure why not put all 32 in D1?
Don't have a "B" because Leitrim* or Waterford won't win it so keep them in the A ......

* Leitrim did win the AI "B" about 30 years ago and subsequently ran Ros close in Connacht culminating in winning it in 94.
All started with the B win.

Getting regular league football against the likes of Meath, Cork, Mayo, Donegal, Derry, Tyrone and Kildare over several years had a hell of a lot more to do with it

Importing a couple of Dubs didn't harm them either

[6th sam]

AI is an easily marketable product regardless of the time of year.

April to June is perhaps the worst possible time to market All-Ireland championships

The soccer season is coming to an end, Champions League, Premier League etc., Heineken Cup in rugby,

And World Cups and Euros every second year, which obliterate everything else

It's a very crowded time of year

I remember in '94, Dublin played Kildare, a fixture which had drawn over 60k the previous two years, it was on the same day as Ireland v Italy, it drew 22k, the replay drew around the same

Tradition dies hard

The October NBA finals, with the Lakers and LeBron, were the lowest rated in many years this year

The November US Masters didn't work at all in my view

There's even something off about August All-Irelands, never mind June

September is the time for All-Irelands, October would be better than August

It's the worst time to market?? There have been championship games for years in May/June, they'd be even easier to market if there are games week on week. Again this year showed the benefit of that. For the county player it's a case of enjoy sole focus on the county game, then back to help your local mates, when county season on , fringe club players get a chance to fight for their place when full deck are back. What's not to like?

[thewobbler]

Sid's take is that the GAA championship will suffer in competition with soccer, even though the championship has always shared 3 of its 5 month season with cross-channel soccer and world cups.

Actually when you type that up it's ludicrous. 5 months to run off a competition where the winners play at most 10 matches.

But I still don't understand the take. When the championship is knockout and competitive, stadiums are full. Doesn't matter whether it's round 1 in May, or the final on September. When the games are dead rubbers and/or non competitive, they half fill Croke Park, even for semi finals in August.

It's a quality competition that attracts people. The media don't create a competition, but they feed on it when it catches public imagination. Time of year is a small, maybe even trivial factor.

[sid waddell]

Sid's take is that the GAA championship will suffer in competition with soccer, even though the championship has always shared 3 of its 5 month season with cross-channel soccer and world cups.

Actually when you type that up it's ludicrous. 5 months to run off a competition where the winners play at most 10 matches.

But I still don't understand the take. When the championship is knockout and competitive, stadiums are full. Doesn't matter whether it's round 1 in May, or the final on September. When the games are dead rubbers and/or non competitive, they half fill Croke Park, even for semi finals in August.

It's a quality competition that attracts people. The media don't create a competition, but they feed on it when it catches public imagination. Time of year is a small, maybe even trivial factor.

Of course what you neglect to mention is that the two months of the English soccer season the GAA championships have traditionally been played in are August and September, when interest in English soccer is far less

Of course the GAA championships suffer from being at the same time as World Cups and Euros - an early season Super Sunday between Brighton and Newcastle, well, not so much

Do you think Derry v Donegal 2002 suffered in terms of general interest?

Did Dublin v Meath 2010 suffer in terms of general interest?

Did Armagh v Down 2011 suffer in terms of general interest?

Did Dublin v Meath 2016 suffer in terms of general interest?

Of course they did, everybody outside the die hards was watching the World Cup, the Champions League final and the Euros

Scheduling the business end of your championships to clash with the end of the soccer season, the World Cup and Euros is pure idiocy

Although perhaps not if you come the rural True Gael™ paradise you inhabit!

But the GAA faces competition - if you're a corner shop with a reliable clientele because there are no other shops within a mile, you don't close down the shop, up sticks and set up behind the Tesco superstore five miles away

[thewobbler]

Thats 4 games in literally forever.

Put the AI knockout stages on in June and every once in a blue moon, they'll clash with an Ireland game in a World Cup finals or a champions league final involving Man Utd or Liverpool. No doubt about it. But that's not reason enough to drag the all Ireland over the entire summer, and let's be honest as long as top brass can show a little wherewithal to not stubbornly stick to 7pm Saturdays in the first week of June, and the relevant timing for a Sunday in early July every other year, it won't be an issue.

[sid waddell]

AI is an easily marketable product regardless of the time of year.

April to June is perhaps the worst possible time to market All-Ireland championships

The soccer season is coming to an end, Champions League, Premier League etc., Heineken Cup in rugby,

And World Cups and Euros every second year, which obliterate everything else

It's a very crowded time of year

I remember in '94, Dublin played Kildare, a fixture which had drawn over 60k the previous two years, it was on the same day as Ireland v Italy, it drew 22k, the replay drew around the same

Tradition dies hard

The October NBA finals, with the Lakers and LeBron, were the lowest rated in many years this year

The November US Masters didn't work at all in my view

There's even something off about August All-Irelands, never mind June

September is the time for All-Irelands, October would be better than August

It's the worst time to market?? There have been championship games for years in May/June, they'd be even easier to market if there are games week on week. Again this year showed the benefit of that. For the county player it's a case of enjoy sole focus on the county game, then back to help your local mates, when county season on , fringe club players get a chance to fight for their place when full deck are back. What's not to like?

May/June games are early season games, they're at the start of the summer

Remember Armagh v Down 2011? It clashed with the Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United

You don't market against that, you simply get crushed

Even Derry v Down 1994 lost a lot of exposure because it was on the same day as Germany v Ireland when Ireland won 2-0

What you're now proposing is that early season championship games take place in March or early April

And that's an even harder sell because the weather is not as good and key late season soccer matches also tend to take place on those Sundays

It's also better for the clubs to have their players play when they're fresh - before the inter-county championship - as well as giving club players a genuine chance to stake a place for the county team

Look at Ballymun this year - what was the difference? Freshness of key players - McCarthy, Small, Rock, McMahon, who in previous seasons have not performed in the Dublin championship because they were jaded after the county season

[sid waddell]

Thats 4 games in literally forever.

Put the AI knockout stages on in June and every once in a blue moon, they'll clash with an Ireland game in a World Cup finals or a champions league final involving Man Utd or Liverpool. No doubt about it. But that's not reason enough to drag the all Ireland over the entire summer, and let's be honest as long as top brass can show a little wherewithal to not stubbornly stick to 7pm Saturdays in the first week of June, and the relevant timing for a Sunday in early July every other year, it won't be an issue.

Every second summer is not once in a blue moon

The soccer season comes to a crescendo in April and May every year

You're the person with the questions to answer here - you're proposing to move the GAA's showpiece competitions forward three months from their traditional final dates - slots which have worked extremely well for a century - not least because August and September are months where there are few counter attractions

It's like baseball deciding to move the World Series to clash with the Superbowl

You need a minimum of three months to play the inter-county championship, because you have to maximise media exposure

[sid waddell]

Now if you wanted to keep a regular programme of club championship games over a number of months - and keep the inter-county championships where they need to be in the calendar - finishing in September - ie. not completely separate the club and county seasons - this is probably how you'd do it

You provide seven designated club championship matchdays each for hurling and football from April to October - you stop all inter-county action on these matchdays and you introduce a rule centrally that county boards have to hold club championship action on these matchdays

Seven designated matchdays is ample time to finish a club hurling or football championship by October 17th, even if your county team reaches an All-Ireland final

All non-round robin games bar the All-Ireland finals go to extra-time and penalties if necessary

2021

Jan 31 NFL 1
Feb 7 NFL 2/NHL 1
Feb 14 NFL 3/NHL 2
Feb 21 NHL 3
Feb 28 NFL 4
Mar 7 NFL 5/NHL 4
Mar 14 NFL 6/NHL 5
Mar 21 NFL 7/NHL 6
Mar 28 NHL 7
Apr 4 NFL FINAL
Apr 11 NHL FINAL
Apr 18 Club Football Matchday 1
Apr 25 Club Hurling Matchday 1
May 2 Club Football Matchday 2
May 9 Club Hurling Matchday 2
May 16 Football Provincial Prelims
May 23 Hurling Provincial 1/Football Provincial Quarter-Finals
May 30 Hurling Provincial 2/Football Provincial Quarter-Finals
Jun 6 Club Football Matchday 3
Jun 9 (Midweek) Club Hurling Matchday 3
Jun 13 Club Football Matchday 4
Jun 20 Hurling Provincial 3/Football Provincial Semi-Finals/Football Qualifiers 1
Jun 27 Hurling Provincial 4/Football Provincial Semi-Finals
Jul 4 Hurling Provincial 5
Jul 11 Football Provincial Finals/Football Qualifiers 2
Jul 18 Hurling Provincial Finals/Football Provincial Finals/ Football Qualifiers 3
Jul 25 Club Hurling Matchday 4
Jul 28 (Midweek) Club Football Matchday 5
August 1 Club Hurling Matchday 5
August 8 All-Ireland Hurling Quarter-Finals /Football Qualifiers 4
August 15 All-Ireland Football Quarter-Finals
August 22 All-Ireland Hurling Semi-Finals
August 29 All-Ireland Football Semi-Finals
September 5 All-Ireland Hurling Final (replay September 18)
September 12 All-Ireland Football Final (replay September 19)
September 26 Club Hurling Matchday 6
October 3 Club Football Matchday 6
October 10 Club Hurling Matchday 7
October 17 Club Football Matchday 7
October 24 Provincial Club Prelims
October 31 Provincial Club Q/F or S/F
November 7 Provincial Club Q/F OR S/F
November 14 Provincial Club Finals or S/F
November 21 Provincial Club Finals
December 5 All-Ireland Club Semi-Finals
December 19 All-Ireland Club Finals

[thewobbler]

We regularly see 5-figure attendances for national league games in February, and that's in a competition- with the greatest respect to Dublin and Kerry - that the players don't even seem to celebrate winning.

If you're worried about county championship attendances being hit if starting in March, you're worried about the wrong thing.

[sid waddell]

We regularly see 5-figure attendances for national league games in February, and that's in a competition- with the greatest respect to Dublin and Kerry - that the players don't even seem to celebrate winning.

If you're worried about county championship attendances being hit if starting in March, you're worried about the wrong thing.

10,001 is a five figure attendance

So is 82,300

[thewobbler]

We regularly see 5-figure attendances for national league games in February, and that's in a competition- with the greatest respect to Dublin and Kerry - that the players don't even seem to celebrate winning.

If you're worried about county championship attendances being hit if starting in March, you're worried about the wrong thing.

10,001 is a five figure attendance

So is 82,300

Thanks for that clarification. We could go around in circles for a while with this one.

But I will say this. The league (in both codes) is a second tier competition, often played with experimental teams in far flung venues, and one that enjoys limited marketing, limited media exposure, limited narrative in terms of creating the "heroes" you believe the sport needs. And as mentioned previously, nobody is that bothered by winning the competition outright. The goals are to get promoted, thereby giving you a better chance the following season of being prepared for championship ball, or (if in D1) to stay up, thereby giving you a better chance of being prepared for championship ball the following season.

And yet despite this positioning, its weekly cumulative attendance comfortably (and per code) dwarfs that of every other sport in Ireland, regardless of what stage their competitions are at.

So even when the elements are against it, the game enjoys a national allure. The interest is there and in spades. And in the vast majority of counties it doesn't fluctuate like it does in Dublin. There is a strong baseline that improves with success, but doesn't fall below the baseline in failure.

Why these figures wouldn't translate into a multiple if running its premier competition, held in the warmer months of March-June, well I can't work that one out. I don't think anyone could to be honest.

[sid waddell]

Earlier you were making out that April was something akin to monsoon season

Now March is a "warmer month"

I'm not sure I've ever been colder than on the lower deck of the Cusack Stand on Paddy's Day 2008 with an Arctic wind cutting through me, me teeth were chattering

The night of Paddy's Day 2016 perhaps, when me teeth were chattering again walking home pissed from a Damien Dempsey gig

10/3/13 for Dublin v Kildare was another teeth chatterer
As was 28/3/15 for Dublin v Derry (RIP)
23/2/19 for Dublin v Mayo was balmy and still, however, that's Ireland for ya
As was 3/12/17 for Liam Mellows v St. Thomas at Salthill and 22/11/15 for Sarsfields v Craughwell at the same venue

Anyway, March can be cold, it can be bloody cold