All Ireland club football championships 2023/24

[Milltown Row2]

No starred games in Cavan?, where there's a means or playing without county players and not losing points?

Another gripe of the club player losing out when the county 'keep' the players for so long, the preference it seems will always be with the 1% club rather than the 99% of games/players

Like I said, there shouldn't be ay argument on teams entering their own championships at whatever level they can, based on their county by/laws

But once you enter the provincial stage you can't be a div 1 team playing in your provinces championships at intermediate level or div 2 at Junior level.

Either you have aspirations of getting better in you county or dropping leagues within your county so that you can perform (should you win your title) in the All Ireland series

You shouldn't be able to do both, complaining that county players are not available isn't a hinderance, at least you have county players, a lot of clubs that enter junior or intermediate haven't any starters or panelists 

[Armagh18]

And also, I would think most of the people griping about Kerry and the JFC have got things the wrong way around.

I'd suspect that 90% of county SFCs have a deep lining of deadweight teams that have no more chance of winning their county SFC, than they do of winning this year's Super Bowl.

Certainly that's the case in those I'm most familiar with: Down and Armagh.

In such cases, the clubs in question are at senior level by accident rather than design. They should really be playing IFC.

12 teams max per county in their IFC and SFC I suggest.

Your logic has no place around here..

Seriously though, good points. There's no way somebody can tell me there's 16 teams in any county capable of winning SFC.
So barring a county like Cork with enormous numbers of players and clubs it's hard to make an argument for more than 12 teams in SFC.

Also just to reiterate that virtually everybody in Kerry wants to adjust numbers to have 10-12 clubs in SFC. There's 16 in IFC which I don't agree with but anyway. Croke park are the ones blocking the realignment as they are just ignoring the fact that we aren't getting rid of divisional teams.

theres always gonna be no hopers. Say you that then the 23rd or 24th ranked club will have little or no chance of winning the IFC and so on. West Ham are never gonna win the premier league, Louth ain't winning an all ireland, Waterford arent going to win the tailteann cup.

[Saffron_sam20]

And also, I would think most of the people griping about Kerry and the JFC have got things the wrong way around.

I'd suspect that 90% of county SFCs have a deep lining of deadweight teams that have no more chance of winning their county SFC, than they do of winning this year's Super Bowl.

Certainly that's the case in those I'm most familiar with: Down and Armagh.

In such cases, the clubs in question are at senior level by accident rather than design. They should really be playing IFC.

12 teams max per county in their IFC and SFC I suggest.

Your logic has no place around here..

Seriously though, good points. There's no way somebody can tell me there's 16 teams in any county capable of winning SFC.
So barring a county like Cork with enormous numbers of players and clubs it's hard to make an argument for more than 12 teams in SFC.

Also just to reiterate that virtually everybody in Kerry wants to adjust numbers to have 10-12 clubs in SFC. There's 16 in IFC which I don't agree with but anyway. Croke park are the ones blocking the realignment as they are just ignoring the fact that we aren't getting rid of divisional teams.

theres always gonna be no hopers. Say you that then the 23rd or 24th ranked club will have little or no chance of winning the IFC and so on. West Ham are never gonna win the premier league, Louth ain't winning an all ireland, Waterford arent going to win the tailteann cup.

Exactly, im pretty sure most counties have 2/3 teams that have a serious chance of winning their county championship every year it doesnt mean the rest of the clubs shouldn't bother playing. we get caught up in 'winning' championships. For some clubs competing in their championship is enough. it's all about being realistic. for some senior clubs getting to a county semi final will be seen as a great year for others getting out of a group will be a success. Im sure that would be a bigger success for mid table div 1 clubs rather than dropping down and winning a IFC against teams they superior to

[Look-Up!]

I've made the assertion previously, but really, what is the point of the All Ireland Intermediate and Junior competitions? They both just operate on skewed levels across counties and provinces. It's near impossible to streamline them in terms of club eligibility. The senior competition is authentic and balanced for obvious reasons but the other two just aren't fit for purpose.

100%. Tg4 had a graphic up yesterday showing the Listowel and Arva's games to dates...some amount of hammerings, especially in Munster / Ulster. A complete waste of time unless you're a good Div 1 team or from Kerry

Counties need to align the league and champ as does the inter county scene

Why do they need to align league and championship? They're separate competitions. County players are not available for league so why are people so fixated about weighting the championship on league positions? I've literally never talked to anyone with a problem on how the league and championships are run. If championship relegation was forced on my club because some other club with no county players performed better in the league I'd be absolutely livid.

Anomalies are always going to happen and could be much worse if league positions were given preference. For example, Gowna are the top club in Cavan, a half parish with a small young squad and a couple of lads in their 40s. Should have beaten Donegal champions in Ulster. I would say they have at least 8 players there that would be on the Cavan panel if they commit. Without those lads they'd struggle in league. It would be moronic to put those lads off playing for county or god forbid, have that club playing intermediate because they had a heap of lads away for league.

I understand posters here from other counties are not familiar with Cavan club scene, but if anyone from Cavan described Arva as a good Division 1 team, they'd be calling the men in white coats.

 

I get where you're coming from, but answer me this. How can a team be in the top tier for the league,  (played mostly without their county men) then come championship time they get their county men back and suddenly they are a third tier team?

Ok in Arvas case they are in the lower end of the division 1 league but plenty of other clubs have been high ranked D1 teams in their county but played at lower championship level.

Absolutely no idea and it doesn't bother me TBH. League is league and championship is championship. In Cavan anyway, you often see teams go well in league and flop come championship and vice versa. It's a completely different level of competition and the true gauge of where a club is at. In Arva's case they were well out of their depth in league. They struggled to win Junior for a few years but they had lads off form and a major injury. Some of their bigger names are back and playing well and a few young lads are making an impact so the timing for them has been brilliant. This is huge where you're dealing with small clubs and numbers and just one of those things. Certainly nothing sinister that needs addressing or "fixing". I'd be more worried TBH going down that route and throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Look-Up!]

No starred games in Cavan?, where there's a means or playing without county players and not losing points?

Another gripe of the club player losing out when the county 'keep' the players for so long, the preference it seems will always be with the 1% club rather than the 99% of games/players

Like I said, there shouldn't be ay argument on teams entering their own championships at whatever level they can, based on their county by/laws

But once you enter the provincial stage you can't be a div 1 team playing in your provinces championships at intermediate level or div 2 at Junior level.

Either you have aspirations of getting better in you county or dropping leagues within your county so that you can perform (should you win your title) in the All Ireland series

You shouldn't be able to do both, complaining that county players are not available isn't a hinderance, at least you have county players, a lot of clubs that enter junior or intermediate haven't any starters or panelists

No idea what that means.

Can't comment on other counties but in Arva's case they finished bottom of Division 1 and should have been relegated in any proper league format. The team that did get relegated had 9 points I think and joint 5th from bottom. So was it a Cavan by/law or GAA protocol caused this anomaly?

Like I said I can't understand what some are trying to fix here. There's plenty needs fixing in GAA, but getting knickers in a twist over formats and over complicating things should not be high on the list, if on it at all.

[Itchy]

Its quite clear from the data, that if you wanted to fix one thing in the AI intermediate and Junior Championships it is the Kerry system and how it is "inherently" flawed. Trying to make rules to prevent unusual rare occurrences is silly.

[johnnycool]

Read somewhere over the weekend that the Cork intermediate hurling winners would be the 25th best team in Cork and their junior winners would be their 50th best team in Cork so I'm presuming out of that they've 24 senior clubs between Premier (12 teams) and A (12 teams) grades and similar in Intermediate.

Now there's a huge amount of clubs, regional teams in Cork so maybe that works for them in terms of giving each club a standard they can hope to achieve something in and with both their junior and intermediate champions getting to an AI final albeit both were beaten by their Kilkenny equivalents who'd be the 13th graded team and the 24th graded team respectively based on the fact they've 36 teams in Kilkenny..

there's no quick fix to this

[Rossfan]

Around 8% of Clubs play in the Provincials/AIs.
Half of them play 1 game.
24 Clubs play in the AIs, around 1% of Clubs.

So not really anything for us to be getting wound up about.
I'm curious about the Cavan Leagues though....the bottom team not being relegated???

[Armagh18]

Read somewhere over the weekend that the Cork intermediate hurling winners would be the 25th best team in Cork and their junior winners would be their 50th best team in Cork so I'm presuming out of that they've 24 senior clubs between Premier (12 teams) and A (12 teams) grades and similar in Intermediate.

Now there's a huge amount of clubs, regional teams in Cork so maybe that works for them in terms of giving each club a standard they can hope to achieve something in and with both their junior and intermediate champions getting to an AI final albeit both were beaten by their Kilkenny equivalents who'd be the 13th graded team and the 24th graded team respectively based on the fact they've 36 teams in Kilkenny..

there's no quick fix to this

Exactly. Neither county really doing anything wrong there are they?

[shawshank]

AI Finalists in Junior and Intermediate

    Junior    Intermediate
Cavan    3    0
Mayo    5    4
Meath    2    2
Cork    3    3
Kerry    15    9
Tyrone    6    5
Galway    3    5
UK    2    0
Kildare    1    0
Ros    1    2
W'meath    1    0
Sligo    1    0
Wexford    1    0
Armagh    0    1
Derry    0    2
Mon    0    3
Antrim    0    1
Ferm    0    1
Dublin    0    1
Donegal    0    1

Anyone not listed has never appeared in an AI final in either grade. The numbers speak for themselves on where the issue is.

Kerry clearly the outlier here, either Kerry is made go to a 12-16 team senior championship or the remaining counties go to 8 the same as Kerry, and naturally the knock on effect to intermediate and junior. The stats don't lie.

[Look-Up!]

Around 8% of Clubs play in the Provincials/AIs.
Half of them play 1 game.
24 Clubs play in the AIs, around 1% of Clubs.

So notvreallyvanything fir us to be getting wound up about.
I'm curious about the Cavan Leagues though....the bottom team not being relegated???

Actually this year the bottom 2 won their playoff game and survived     

Next 2 up went down. I'm guessing this is not normal!!!

[intheknowhow]

No starred games in Cavan?, where there's a means or playing without county players and not losing points?

Another gripe of the club player losing out when the county 'keep' the players for so long, the preference it seems will always be with the 1% club rather than the 99% of games/players

Like I said, there shouldn't be ay argument on teams entering their own championships at whatever level they can, based on their county by/laws

But once you enter the provincial stage you can't be a div 1 team playing in your provinces championships at intermediate level or div 2 at Junior level.

Either you have aspirations of getting better in you county or dropping leagues within your county so that you can perform (should you win your title) in the All Ireland series

You shouldn't be able to do both, complaining that county players are not available isn't a hinderance, at least you have county players, a lot of clubs that enter junior or intermediate haven't any starters or panelists

No idea what that means.

Can't comment on other counties but in Arva's case they finished bottom of Division 1 and should have been relegated in any proper league format. The team that did get relegated had 9 points I think and joint 5th from bottom. So was it a Cavan by/law or GAA protocol caused this anomaly?

Like I said I can't understand what some are trying to fix here. There's plenty needs fixing in GAA, but getting knickers in a twist over formats and over complicating things should not be high on the list, if on it at all.

What's the point in the league then? You are devaluing it ... maybe Arva spotter he loophole.. work the league for a few years. We all know you better better playing better teams... it's no coincidence the all Ireland is won by div 1 teams and senior club championships are won by division 1 teams..

[Ciarrai_thuaidh]

And also, I would think most of the people griping about Kerry and the JFC have got things the wrong way around.

I'd suspect that 90% of county SFCs have a deep lining of deadweight teams that have no more chance of winning their county SFC, than they do of winning this year's Super Bowl.

Certainly that's the case in those I'm most familiar with: Down and Armagh.

In such cases, the clubs in question are at senior level by accident rather than design. They should really be playing IFC.

12 teams max per county in their IFC and SFC I suggest.

Your logic has no place around here..

Seriously though, good points. There's no way somebody can tell me there's 16 teams in any county capable of winning SFC.
So barring a county like Cork with enormous numbers of players and clubs it's hard to make an argument for more than 12 teams in SFC.

Also just to reiterate that virtually everybody in Kerry wants to adjust numbers to have 10-12 clubs in SFC. There's 16 in IFC which I don't agree with but anyway. Croke park are the ones blocking the realignment as they are just ignoring the fact that we aren't getting rid of divisional teams.

theres always gonna be no hopers. Say you that then the 23rd or 24th ranked club will have little or no chance of winning the IFC and so on. West Ham are never gonna win the premier league, Louth ain't winning an all ireland, Waterford arent going to win the tailteann cup.

You have a point to a degree, maybe I phrased it wrong. Teams should have a good shot at competing I suppose would be the best way to put it?

The reason we went down to 8 clubs in Kerry SFC is there were 3/4 clubs getting whacked and it was doing nothing for them or the quality of the championship. Hence the cut was made. Now the quality of clubs has risen again and the Intermediate is too strong so need to go back to 10 Senior clubs possibly. Croke park are blocking this though as they say you can only have 16 teams. There are 8 divisional teams.
In my view (and many share it down here) there is nothing wrong with increasing to 10 Senior clubs, keeping 8 divisions but have them play off amongst themselves and get down to 2-4 of divisions. Then start the SFC knockout.
The knock-on effect at Intermediate and Junior would be significant.

[Look-Up!]

No starred games in Cavan?, where there's a means or playing without county players and not losing points?

Another gripe of the club player losing out when the county 'keep' the players for so long, the preference it seems will always be with the 1% club rather than the 99% of games/players

Like I said, there shouldn't be ay argument on teams entering their own championships at whatever level they can, based on their county by/laws

But once you enter the provincial stage you can't be a div 1 team playing in your provinces championships at intermediate level or div 2 at Junior level.

Either you have aspirations of getting better in you county or dropping leagues within your county so that you can perform (should you win your title) in the All Ireland series

You shouldn't be able to do both, complaining that county players are not available isn't a hinderance, at least you have county players, a lot of clubs that enter junior or intermediate haven't any starters or panelists

No idea what that means.

Can't comment on other counties but in Arva's case they finished bottom of Division 1 and should have been relegated in any proper league format. The team that did get relegated had 9 points I think and joint 5th from bottom. So was it a Cavan by/law or GAA protocol caused this anomaly?

Like I said I can't understand what some are trying to fix here. There's plenty needs fixing in GAA, but getting knickers in a twist over formats and over complicating things should not be high on the list, if on it at all.

What's the point in the league then? You are devaluing it ... maybe Arva spotter he loophole.. work the league for a few years. We all know you better better playing better teams... it's no coincidence the all Ireland is won by div 1 teams and senior club championships are won by division 1 teams..

What loophole and how would they work it? I can assure you Arva had their hands full trying to win the Junior the last few years. Nothing else would have been on their minds only that. Some of their better players back to their best from injury, off form etc and some good youngsters coming through created a wave they rode to Croker and fair play to them. Great timing but to even suggest it was by design is crazy. That's more than playing Division 1, that's throwing county finals! Crazy talk.

[intheknowhow]

No starred games in Cavan?, where there's a means or playing without county players and not losing points?

Another gripe of the club player losing out when the county 'keep' the players for so long, the preference it seems will always be with the 1% club rather than the 99% of games/players

Like I said, there shouldn't be ay argument on teams entering their own championships at whatever level they can, based on their county by/laws

But once you enter the provincial stage you can't be a div 1 team playing in your provinces championships at intermediate level or div 2 at Junior level.

Either you have aspirations of getting better in you county or dropping leagues within your county so that you can perform (should you win your title) in the All Ireland series

You shouldn't be able to do both, complaining that county players are not available isn't a hinderance, at least you have county players, a lot of clubs that enter junior or intermediate haven't any starters or panelists

No idea what that means.

Can't comment on other counties but in Arva's case they finished bottom of Division 1 and should have been relegated in any proper league format. The team that did get relegated had 9 points I think and joint 5th from bottom. So was it a Cavan by/law or GAA protocol caused this anomaly?

Like I said I can't understand what some are trying to fix here. There's plenty needs fixing in GAA, but getting knickers in a twist over formats and over complicating things should not be high on the list, if on it at all.

What's the point in the league then? You are devaluing it ... maybe Arva spotter he loophole.. work the league for a few years. We all know you better better playing better teams... it's no coincidence the all Ireland is won by div 1 teams and senior club championships are won by division 1 teams..

What loophole and how would they work it? I can assure you Arva had their hands full trying to win the Junior the last few years. Nothing else would have been on their minds only that. Some of their better players back to their best from injury, off form etc and some good youngsters coming through created a wave they rode to Croker and fair play to them. Great timing but to even suggest it was by design is crazy. That's more than playing Division 1, that's throwing county finals! Crazy talk.

Just curious do you think your league and champ structures has hampered how your county has performed ? Compared to let's say Tyrone and Monaghan who's leagues and champ align?