Changing the provincial set up

[AZOffaly]

And that's where we are always going to differ Zulu. I see the provincial championships as worthwhile simply because they allow the likes of Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Offaly, Westmeath, Laois and Louth something viable to aim for each year.

If we were to replace it with something just as meaningful I'd have no real problem with it, but if we replace it with nothing other than a mechanism for getting the weak lads out of the way so Kerry, Dublin, Cork, Galway, Mayo and Tyrone can have a private battle each year, then I would have a problem with it.

[Captain Obvious]

There would be less talk about changing the provincial set up if Munster football was as competitive as Munster hurling.

[thewobbler]

I wrote a long piece on this a couple of years ago, here's what I can remember.

A few basic observations:

1. The Provincial Championships will always remain. The hugely important history and traditions they have brought to our game cannot be allowed to dissipate.  And, thankfully, there is a financial safeguard to the competitions; Provincial Councils will not vote to lose the one guaranteed annual money spinner that they actually control.

2. No counties are going to move from Province to Province. Let's not be daft. It would create rifts that would ruin the game. And even if you could find a couple of willing movers, who somehow got agreement from their clubs, their Province and their new Province, you're not going to get the numbers needed to make it into a nicely shaped four groups of eight. It's a pointless discussion. Teams from Munster should play in Munster, and so forth.

3. There is no need for a 10 month inter county season. Only the supporters of a few counties have the thirst for 20 county games a season, and I'm sure most County Board treasurers would let you know that football doesn't pay for itself; the longer a team is in training, the more it costs.

What I'd propose is simple:

1. Scrap the McKenna, FBD and equivalents.
2. Scrap the National League.
3. Start the Provincials the week after the AI club final, and run them out within a month.
4. At the end of the Provincials, an open draw, for 8 x groups of 4 teams.
5. The Provincial winners and runners-up are seeded (they each have a group of their own).
6. You play the other teams in your group home and away, with the top 2 sides going through to the last 16.
7. It's straight knockout from there.
8. Extra time is played in every knockout game, Provincial, and All Ireland.


This method means that

1. The Provincial Championships are still very much worth winning; apart from the silverware, they should see you avoiding 7 of the other best teams in the country during the pool stages.
2. Each county would have a minimum of 7 games, and a maximum of 14 games in a season. Excluding McKenna etc, this is in comparison to minimum 9 and maximum 16 as things stand. It's a shorter, and much more channelled season.
3. Scheduling club mixtures around this defined calendar then becomes so much more simple.
4. The long devalued league is binned, and instead combined with Championship ball.
5. At the end of the day, the All Ireland Champions all had to do roughly the same thing to get there; get as far as they could in their Provincials, make their way through the pools, then revel in the white heat of pure knockout football x4.

[Lone Shark]

Lads the problem isn't the uneven number of teams, since to be honest, if you are a potential All Ireland winner, there are only a handful of teams capable of beating you in the first place.

If by magic, Offaly had a team capable of winning the All Ireland in 2012, the only teams in Leinster capable of beating us would be Kildare and Dublin and maybe, maybe, Laois. If you're not good enough to beat Wexford, Meath, Louth and the like with five or six points to spare, then you aren't good enough to win the All Ireland so Kerry starting a few rungs ahead in the race would be irrelevant.

If this magical new team moved to Munster, we'd only have to worry about Cork and Kerry. In Connacht, it would be Mayo and maybe, maybe Galway. In Ulster, you'd have a few more banana skins, but you'd still only have to win three tough games at most.

Of course there is no such magic and like most of the counties out there, we're a long way off All Ireland standard and won't be winning it next year. However we do have a Leinster championship battle with Kildare in the first round, and winning that means something. That's the beauty of the existing provincial structure, where rivalries have been built up. No matter how good Kildare are, we'll be confident of giving them a game and rightly so. What makes a province hard to win is not the number of teams in it, it's the number of good teams. Moving Longford to Connacht wouldn't change the fact that it would still be the easiest province to win by a country mile. Moving Carlow to Munster would hardly change much either. Wexford might be competitive all right, but Wexford looked as good as I've ever seen them last year when they played Offaly and Westmeath, and they still got knocked out of the championship by Limerick - who are very much Munster if I'm not mistaken.


The problem that some people say needs solving here is not that winning the All Ireland is easier for some counties than others - but that's the nature of every competition that isn't a league. Until you turn the All Ireland race into a national league, which we never will, this will always happen.

The provincial titles, and the rivalries that have been built up within that context, mean something. There are people that will go to attend Longford vs Westmeath expecting a meaningful battle even if the two counties are the worst in Ireland, because they are neighbours but also because there is a historical relevance to it. There is no such relevance to Longford vs Roscommon, and it would be ages being built up. Why would we do that?

[Orchardman]

The argument for?? It gives the lesser lights something realistic to aim for but history shows this isn't really true. The other argument seems to be that some fellas still like them, fair enough but that isn't reason enough to keep them.

Thats just plain wrong.
In Connacht, Sligo, Leitrim, and Roscommon have all won provincial titles in the last 20 years without ever being genuine All-Ireland contenders.
Clare won in Munster while Limerick went very close on a couple of occasions. 
Fermanagh in the North were in an Ulster final a couple of years ago - so too Antrim came within shouting distance of it.

In Leinster, Westmeath and Laois won titles while everyone knows about Louths woes. Up till 98, Kildare were hardly won of the leading powers.


It plainly gives the lesser lights something to aim at - as history HAS proven.


Incidentally, there are only 11 in Leinster, Not 12. And how is it fair? because its a knockout competition. Lose and your out. You dont have to beat 10 other teams to win Leinster, you have to beat 3, (or 4 every third year on average).  while in Munster you have to beat 2 - (3 every second year on average).

If it were a league system, where you had to beat the other 11 teams or try to, it would be unbalanced a you would then have to play 10 times to win Leinster while only 5 in munster ...That would be unbalanced.

Lads, some of you are getting the wrong end of the stick. Wer not talking about doing away with the provincial system. Just on about adding a few teams to connaught and munster to even the number of teams up. It's not as if it's totally false, you could still be playing a team that is a local derby.

If the shoe was on the other foot and armagh had to join leinster I wudnt give a dam. We have a border with louth, and more of a rivalry with meath and even dublin than we ever had with fermanagh or antrim, just IMO.

All this is about making the number of teams even, nothing to do with connaught being weak so don't be so defensive connaught people. Besides, it aint gonna happen!

Also, as someone said, we could take other issues of fairness and equality such as populations of counties, ie the dublin v leitrim comparison, and that's another can of worms. Kildare and laois have been shown to be the fastest growing poulations in the last census,and the east/west divide will only get greater.

[Captain Obvious]

The competitive nature & great rivalry of our province has helped ourselves & Tyrone to All Ireland success moving to leinster or elsewhere would lose that IMO.

[brianboru00]

.........and if you bothered to actually read to posts you d see I don t have a problem with evening up the numbers.

My post that you quoted was merely pointing out that the provincial championships do provide an achievable goal for weaker teams.

I also pointed out that inaccurate comparisons are widespread.
i.e. "12 teams in Leinster while connacht has only 5 counties" and similar.

[armaghniac]

The GAA uses a county structure, a profoundly uneven unit, but one people identify with. It also uses uneven provinces. If you want a level playing field then restructure the counties first. I don't see much advantage in dismantling the traditional Ulster setup just to make it a single county less.

[Jinxy]

Lads the problem isn't the uneven number of teams, since to be honest, if you are a potential All Ireland winner, there are only a handful of teams capable of beating you in the first place.

If by magic, Offaly had a team capable of winning the All Ireland in 2012, the only teams in Leinster capable of beating us would be Kildare and Dublin and maybe, maybe, Laois. If you're not good enough to beat Wexford, Meath, Louth and the like with five or six points to spare, then you aren't good enough to win the All Ireland so Kerry starting a few rungs ahead in the race would be irrelevant.

If this magical new team moved to Munster, we'd only have to worry about Cork and Kerry. In Connacht, it would be Mayo and maybe, maybe Galway. In Ulster, you'd have a few more banana skins, but you'd still only have to win three tough games at most.

Of course there is no such magic and like most of the counties out there, we're a long way off All Ireland standard and won't be winning it next year. However we do have a Leinster championship battle with Kildare in the first round, and winning that means something. That's the beauty of the existing provincial structure, where rivalries have been built up. No matter how good Kildare are, we'll be confident of giving them a game and rightly so. What makes a province hard to win is not the number of teams in it, it's the number of good teams. Moving Longford to Connacht wouldn't change the fact that it would still be the easiest province to win by a country mile. Moving Carlow to Munster would hardly change much either. Wexford might be competitive all right, but Wexford looked as good as I've ever seen them last year when they played Offaly and Westmeath, and they still got knocked out of the championship by Limerick - who are very much Munster if I'm not mistaken.


The problem that some people say needs solving here is not that winning the All Ireland is easier for some counties than others - but that's the nature of every competition that isn't a league. Until you turn the All Ireland race into a national league, which we never will, this will always happen.

The provincial titles, and the rivalries that have been built up within that context, mean something. There are people that will go to attend Longford vs Westmeath expecting a meaningful battle even if the two counties are the worst in Ireland, because they are neighbours but also because there is a historical relevance to it. There is no such relevance to Longford vs Roscommon, and it would be ages being built up. Why would we do that?

Looks like someone's been hitting the hot ports a few days early.

[Lone Shark]

You'll notice the keywords "by magic". As a bookmaker, you can imagine the kind of probability I afford to such a likelihood.

Sadly.

[Jinxy]

It's the reference to Laois that troubled me more so than the magic.

[mylestheslasher]

Colm o rourke reckons Cavan should move to Connaught. Well colm can f**k off, not that long ago he left Connaught himself for meath but seems he forgot to bring the rest of leitrim with him. If there is to be reform and a county like Cavan, who are traditionally the most successful team in ulster, are to be removed from ulster then surely that means that tradition itself is being done away with. If tradition is to be sacrificed then why bother with provinces at all and just go to a seeded champions league format?

[Orangemac]

1. Scrap the McKenna, FBD and equivalents.
2. Scrap the National League.
3. Start the Provincials the week after the AI club final, and run them out within a month.
4. At the end of the Provincials, an open draw, for 8 x groups of 4 teams.
5. The Provincial winners and runners-up are seeded (they each have a group of their own).
6. You play the other teams in your group home and away, with the top 2 sides going through to the last 16.

A lt of this is fair Wobbler but are you going to end up with a few meaningless games if each team has 6 games? Say Kerry,Galway,Cavan and Carlow are in a group, are there going to be a number of games that have no relevance? Unless the remaining 16 teams could qualify for a secondary competition with 3rd place teams being seeded?

[Tommy58]

A team with a bye to provincial semi finals has almost 3 times (2.8 to be exact) as good a chance of the AI as a team drawn in the preliminary round. Fairness demands that all teams play in a provincial quarter final. There are at least 3 options depending on counties' attachment to their provinces.
1. Move teams permanently from Ulster and Leinster to Connacht and Munster (as suggested already).
2. Let teams take turns in the 'wrong' province. Thus, each Ulster county would play in Connacht once every nine years.
3. Play the preliminary rounds as now. Let the winners progress to the quarters as now. Let the losers move to the quarters of the ' wrong province.

[thewobbler]

OrangeMac, you're defeating the point of the system if you add in a secondary competition.

There are too many meaningless games, in which players and fans are simply not bothered, in the GAA calendar as its stands. The system I've proposed consolidates this so that there is only a maximum of 3 dead rubbers per team, and they're all banged out in quick succession in June.

There have been endless conflicting bullshit assessments over the years that:

a) the current system is unfair to the better teams because they can play each other and get put out early
b) the current system is unfair to the weaker teams because they can get put out early and never get a chance to develop as a team
c) the current system is unfair on Leinster teams because they have to play more games
d) the current system is unfair on Connacht/Munster teams because they never get a head of steam up before they reach Croke

Basically, every county in Ireland spins an unfair story when it suits them.

So lets make it fair. If you win your Provincial, you avoid the other big guns. That apart, everyone else starts the AI trail on the same footing. They've got six games to make and break their team. They should, in most seasons, get a fair mix of good and bad teams in their groups, and have a chance of easy victories, to settle old rivalries, and once in while, to pull off a result that will raise their profile beyond recognition. They'll get to visit places for Championship football they've never been before. They'll have the advantage of a home crowd for half their matches. They actually can influence the course of the Championship, without wining it.



Tommy58, you're dealing in the worst type of GAA politics there. Let's look at a problem, then invent 'solution' that is convoluted and unwelcome. Provincial championships are for teams from a province. They're not a playpen for random numbers.