Would you be in favour of a second tier?

[giveballaghback]

The way you are talking benny we need a 2 tier division 1.

[BennyCake]

The way you are talking benny we need a 2 tier division 1.

That's what Brolly and Co will be saying, after they get their 2 tiers!

[Rossfan]

Has the GAA decision making process been changed?

[PadraicHenryPearse]

A tiered championship is not the answer.

the gaa has to decide what it wants and then it can decide on the format.

for me i want a knockout championship, open draw championship (not against some form of seeding), league football in the summer. i could take or leave the provincials. get rid of fbd/obyrne etc.

aim is for min 12 games max 18 games per team per year. majority against teams around each others level. run all 3 concurrently or at least championship and league.

[manfromdelmonte]

2 tiers would be enough; play both finals on the same day, and move the minor final. It would give the lesser counties a realistic goal. The same could be done for hurling BTW

They'll never move the minor final, because that would impact the strongest counties.

They've had 14 years to do it for hurling since the Christy Ring Cup was started and they never bothered.

They played the CR final the day of the McCarthy Cup semi final. The minors were relegated to the 1st gsme of 3.
Strong hurling counties soon got that changed back...

[BennyCake]

A tiered championship is not the answer.

the gaa has to decide what it wants and then it can decide on the format.

for me i want a knockout championship, open draw championship (not against some form of seeding), league football in the summer. i could take or leave the provisonals. get rid of fbd/obyrne etc.

aim is for min 12 games max 18 games per team per year. majority against teams around each others level. run all 3 concurrently or at least championship and league.

Me too. But it's not going to happen.

The GAA want to gather all the big guns, and make them play each other again and again, in front of big crowds, and milk that tit dry. Then proclaim how great our games are. While 25 other counties are forgotten about, never to be seen on our TV screens.

The more the championship is fecked about with, the more sense the old provincial system makes sense.

[PadraicHenryPearse]

the gaa get the big matches with the concurrent  league and championship with the league in the summer. if league went to 3 divisions you could have 8 12 12 or 10 10 12.

weaker teams 11 league and minimum 1 championship and stronger 7/9 league and minimum 1 championship but likely 3-6. they also get provincial matches.

[Blowitupref]

A tiered championship is not the answer.

the gaa has to decide what it wants and then it can decide on the format.

for me i want a knockout championship, open draw championship (not against some form of seeding), league football in the summer. i could take or leave the provisonals. get rid of fbd/obyrne etc.

aim is for min 12 games max 18 games per team per year. majority against teams around each others level. run all 3 concurrently or at least championship and league.

Me too. But it’s not going to happen.

The GAA want to gather all the big guns, and make them play each other again and again, in front of big crowds, and milk that tit dry. Then proclaim how great our games are. While 25 other counties are forgotten about, never to be seen on our TV screens.

The more the championship is fecked about with, the more sense the old provincial system makes sense.

In a nutshell and a big push by the "elite" over the last year to make this happen now.

[BennyCake]

Is there something to be said for another mass a boycott by teams and fans? Maybe that'll make the head honchos sit up and take notice.

[seafoid]

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/kevin-mcstay-provincial-championships-reaching-the-end-of-the-line-1.3891140

Kevin McStay: Provincial championships reaching the end of the line

Many formerly intense rivalries fading away as results closely follow the formbook


about 2 hours ago


 
Kevin McStay


"Pleasant" was the word that sprang to mind at the Roscommon-Leitrim championship derby on Sunday. There was a lovely crowd and the day was nice. But the game itself was over as a contest early on and, despite Leitrim's excellent league showing, Roscommon had too much for them.

Long before the final whistle, the conversations around us were drifting towards other matters. In his match programme welcome to patrons, the Connacht council president Gearóid McSamhráin noted that if there is to be a two -tier championship, then that should come into play only after a county has been eliminated from the provincial championship. In other words, the provincial championship is sacred. But for how long?

One of the great surprises to me when I was involved with Roscommon was the level of anxiety with which many people in the county seemed to approach Leitrim games. Even during the week, people in Roscommon clearly saw this as a real challenge even though the game was in Dr Hyde Park. There is this deep -rooted, long-standing local rivalry of which I hadn't been fully aware despite living in the town for many years.

You'd constantly hear this refrain: "Well, we have a big rivalry with Leitrim." Or: "Oh God, I don't like paying them in Carrick at all. We struggle against them always."

I was fascinated by this and I looked it up to discover that Roscommon have never lost a championship game to Leitrim in Carrick-on-Shannon. But this is just one of the intense, complex local rivalries deeply embedded in the GAA and which has always given the provincial championship its kinetic energy.

Sunday in Dr Hyde Park ran along such overwhelmingly predictable lines that it made me wonder to what extent the border rivalry is still alive.

One of my most memorable introductions to the power of the local rivalry was in 2006 when I was covering a game between Tyrone and Derry in Omagh for RTÉ television.

Like most people, I knew that they had history but to my mind, at that point in time, Tyrone were in a different league; they were All-Ireland champions, they were young, the manner of their win the previous September meant that they were the talk of the country. But in the ground that day, that disparity did not exist.

There was genuine concern among Tyrone fans. Equally, there was a real defiance among the Derry crowd and an expectation that their team would take Tyrone on physically and impose themselves. In attitude, it was the last remnants of the Eamon Coleman era. And both sets of crowds did not really like one another.

Almost feral

The idea of losing was unconscionable. The atmosphere was almost feral. The tribalism was absolute. It is an amazing thing that 20 yards of land can create this intense contrast in loyalties and emotions. But the atmosphere that day was extraordinary. There was a sense that all bets were off; this was a day in which anything could happen.

And lo and behold, Derry came out and won by six points. I remember wondering where that had come from; for how long had that Derry team been thinking about and planning that one game. Once the fixtures were announced, they had six, seven months to think about it and talk about it and prepare.

Tyrone became their reason to be and they would have been conscious of the portrayal of those players as champions. And afterwards, there was an unmistakable sense of a significant shift: the champions had been beaten and that changed everything. That was the power of the local rivalry, the potential for this unexpected shock.
Tyrone versus Derry in 2006 generated an awesome atmosphere but Derry have slipped a long way down the rankings and the rivalry has been diluted. Photograph: Lorcan Doherty/Inpho Tyrone versus Derry in 2006 generated an awesome atmosphere but Derry have slipped a long way down the rankings and the rivalry has been diluted. Photograph: Lorcan Doherty/Inpho 
It's probably the elemental thrill of the football championship: the possibility that one county will defy form and tradition and use the energy of that rivalry to take their neighbour out. In the 1980s and 1990s, I think those days were quite common. There was less information available then: teams could train away in seclusion, maybe spring a debutante player and pull off an ambush in the sun. But over the last decade, they are an increasingly rare occurrence.

On Sunday, we had an extremely good performance from Offaly who came close to what would have been a considerable shock against Meath in Navan.

Had Niall McNamee managed to finish the goal chance he worked, then that game would have been over. And Limerick's win over Tipperary was a huge surprise because Tipp' are regarded as a top 12 team. But I think the idea of the All-Ireland champions being taken down in provincial games is becoming increasingly remote.

And yet, the siege mentality remains hugely important to teams. Returning to Roscommon, they face Mayo next in the Connacht semi-final. And so they are entering into a bigger and historically more troubling rivalry. For whatever reason, Mayo are comfortable with the idea of playing Roscommon, who haven't won in Castlebar since 1986.

I was playing in that game and it was precisely the kind of shock I'm talking about. Mayo had had a big year in 1985 and we were expected to follow up and then Roscommon just turned us over and ended our summer. But in recent years, the sense of rivalry has been diluted by the fact that Mayo win. The fixture has lost its lustre.

This is partly to do with managers taking mythology out of the equation. In Mayo, for example, the big psychological stumbling block was always Galway. We had this attitude that we could take on anyone but that Galway would somehow get the better of us. In my playing career, we met Galway in seven championship games. I think it's fair to say we probably had a better team in five of those years. But we lost every time.
Received knowledge

It was part of our received knowledge that Mayo teams struggled with Galway. In contrast, Roscommon seemed to love playing Galway. I couldn't get over it. They relished it – they always sensed they had a chance and that definitely fed into the approach in 2017 when I was managing them.

The attitude becomes embedded in the county itself. It is inherited and passed down through kitchen table conversations and stories told in the car and in the pub. It's a national thing. You hear Donegal people say, 'oh, we struggle with Monaghan'. Or Monaghan dreading playing Tyrone. It becomes part of the narrative of these local rivalries. And it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But the evidence suggests that the combination of mythology and those genuine out-of-the-blue shocks are disappearing from the game. There is so much information now and preparation and the stronger teams so well drilled that games tend to run along anticipated lines. Teams and managers like to talk about one game at a time. But any team with ambition plans for the bigger picture and takes certain chances with selection and takes calculated gambles.
Offaly put it up to Meath for a long time before Meath struck for a crucial goal. The former keen Dublin-Meath rivalry is moribund, at least for now. Photograph: Lorraine O'Sullivan/Inpho Offaly put it up to Meath for a long time before Meath struck for a crucial goal. The former keen Dublin-Meath rivalry is moribund, at least for now. Photograph: Lorraine O'Sullivan/Inpho 
Teams are starting to win the games they should be winning. The shock factor is being eliminated from the equation. You play correctly and take care of business and then all attention goes to the fixture that you know will make or break your championship. For the few years I was in Roscommon, trying to convince the squad that Leitrim was not a key rival was a tricky piece of psychology.

Perhaps in their father's era it had been a true rivalry but now it was a ticket to the semi-final. And that is not to be disrespectful to Leitrim, it's just that the record book points to the fact that Roscommon win these games – often overwhelmingly. So it went on Sunday.

Ebbing away

And the pattern is being repeated. Rivalries are disappearing. Dublin-Meath is over – at least for now. Kerry and Cork is not a rivalry, at least for the present time. Mayo and Galway has never been more alive. But Tyrone and Armagh is nothing like the contest it was a decade ago. The only theatre still sustaining the tradition of the shock in the championship is Ulster. But even there, Tyrone and Donegal and Monaghan have come to dominate the silverware since Armagh's golden era came to a close in 2006.

So the tension and drama of these provincial days is slowly ebbing away. And it is hard to see how it is going to re-establish itself. There were 8,061 people in Hyde Park on Sunday, a nice crowd but probably 4,000 less than would have turned up when the provincial championship games were the only show in town.

They are becoming diluted for sure. And it is only going one way. Therein lies one of the linchpins of the provincial championship. This has to be of significant concern not just to the provincial councils but also the custodians of the GAA.

In some ways, this is terrible to see. But if these rivalries have lost their electricity, whether real or imagined, then it is becoming increasingly clear the provincial championships are reaching the end of the line.

[manfromdelmonte]

when you take away local rivalries in the GAA you lose a lot of your core support. club games are built on local rivalries
and you are relying on 'customers' or event junkies to fill the void

[five points]

A tiered championship is not the answer.

the gaa has to decide what it wants and then it can decide on the format.

for me i want a knockout championship, open draw championship (not against some form of seeding), league football in the summer. i could take or leave the provincials. get rid of fbd/obyrne etc.

aim is for min 12 games max 18 games per team per year. majority against teams around each others level. run all 3 concurrently or at least championship and league.

All very good but the highlighted ideas if implemented would leave little or no space on the calendar for club football and hurling.

[Rossfan]

Is there something to be said for another mass a boycott by teams and fans? Maybe that'll make the head honchos sit up and take notice.

Anyway
https://m.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/secondtier-championship-plans-to-be-put-to-management-committee-38109439.html

[johnnycool]

2 tiers would be enough; play both finals on the same day, and move the minor final. It would give the lesser counties a realistic goal. The same could be done for hurling BTW

They'll never move the minor final, because that would impact the strongest counties.

They've had 14 years to do it for hurling since the Christy Ring Cup was started and they never bothered.

Initially the Christy Ring and Nicky Rackard cups were played at 2pm prior to the two AI hurling semi-finals (the minors played at 12.30 IIRC) and it really was a boost to the likes of ourselves and Westmeath in the first one to be played on such an occasion, but hurling man Nicky Rackard moved them from that date to an obscure date in July and it hasn't been changed since.
The cúnt presented the previous years Down hurlers their NHL Div2 medals in Newry a few months before as he was canvassing for votes and if we'd known then what we do now he should have been booted down the road.

[five points]

Initially the Christy Ring and Nicky Rackard cups were played at 2pm prior to the two AI hurling semi-finals (the minors played at 12.30 IIRC) and it really was a boost to the likes of ourselves and Westmeath in the first one to be played on such an occasion, but hurling man Nicky Rackard moved them from that date to an obscure date in July and it hasn't been changed since.
The cúnt presented the previous years Down hurlers their NHL Div2 medals in Newry a few months before as he was canvassing for votes and if we'd known then what we do now he should have been booted down the road.

Nicky Rackard died over 40 years ago. If you're going to impugn someone, at least don't confuse them with a dead man.