Champions League/World Cup structure for Football AI

[SomebodyFixDublinGAA]

I don't like soccerisms creeping into GAA but this is one that could improve the excitement of the All-Ireland football championship big time. Apparently it even got Jack O' Connor's seal of approval!!

At the moment, I feel sorry for weak teams Ulster and Leinster, Ulster particularly, who probably have the most competitive provincial championship and also for weak teams in Connaght and Munster.

Its very difficult for a team like say, Monaghan or Down to come out of Ulster clean and straight into a quarter final. Its not easy to come out of such a competitive province and then go far. Also the weaker teams in Munster and Connaght must see provincial finals as almost impossible. Like how do Tipperary ever expect to beat Kerry or Cork but if they were in Leinster maybe they'd stand a better chance. Then what if Kerry were put in Ulster, would they cruise to the AI quarter final as easily. It seems Cork or Kerry are almost guarenteed a quarter final spot as one of them will win Munster. Same goes to Mayo and Galway. It just seems like some teams have a much greater and tougher distance to travel.

Imagine 8 groups of 4 (32 counties - ok I know theres New York and London but lets imagine theres 32 teams) and each team plays each other twice, home and away or alternatively just once in a neutral ground. The top 2 qualify into the All-Ireland last 16 whereas the teams in 3rd and 4th place could go into a Tommy Murphy like cup. Could you imagine Kerry playing say Kildare in their first game or Galway playing say Cavan in their first. Wouldn't it be more interesting and wouldn't every team get a fair crack at it and also get to play more games? It would also give a good indication of the the most consistent teams and some of the weaker counties might get a better chance of getting far and would at least go into the 2nd division (Tommy Murphy) tournament. They could seed the groups on how each county performed in the previous year.

I wouldn't like to loose the provincial championships as they are a big part of the tradition but they could be played seperately on another time of the year or even replace the National League. Playing them seperately might even restore their significance as I find the backdoor system has slightly taken away from the interest of the provincial comps.

Whatye think?

[mountainboii]

I'd be in favour of something like this, I don't think the championship is structured fairly at the minute. Although I'm not too optimistic that things will change any time soon as I've yet to hear any proposal that hasn't met objection from some quarter.

From your suggestion, I don't think the Tommy Murphy Cup would work in that format. Most teams just wouldn't be bothered with it.

Also, your weaker teams in Munster and Connacht probably don't view their provincial situation as pessimistically. For your Clares and Leitrims, grabbing a rare provincial title by scraping by one of the big guns is about as much as they can realistically aim for right now. A provincial title won in a separate competition wouldn't mean as much.

[INDIANA]

Its never going to happen unfortunately. The provincial councils will never agree to it and neither will the smaller counties. A Provincial title is all 70% of the counties will ever be good enough to win. Under that structure it would be a 100 years before they'd have a chance. No one cares about the TM thats the bottom line.

[stiffler]

I think this is a great idea, one which i have thought a bit about in the past.

Those that say that it will be the death of the provincional championships, the current national league could be restructured to contain only teams from your province, to be played off between Jan- Mar.

The only possible downside to this is that county players will be available to their clubs even less. However, I don't exactly see this as a bad thing as in too many counties, the fixtures committee are having nightmares about trying to schedule games around county fixtures. If the county squad for the year was named in Jan, then a rule can be set that these players are not allowed to play any club games til the end of the all ireland series, (perhaps allowing championship games).

[Denn Forever]

Imagine 8 groups of 4 (32 counties - ok I know theres New York and London but lets imagine theres 32 teams)

Can't see NY or London agreeing with this and I would imagine with the current financial climate, they would expect to be be stronger now!

And this would increase excitement how?  Galway playing Cavan?  Division 1 team playing a Division 3 team.  If we beat Galway and Galway are beaten by Tipperary, Galway would want the old system back.

Only one team can win the AI and the rollercoaster ride that was Wicklow this year, Monaghan last year surely shows that the current system is working quite well.

[The Forfeit Point]

Imagine 8 groups of 4 (32 counties - ok I know theres New York and London but lets imagine theres 32 teams)

Can't see NY or London agreeing with this and I would imagine with the current financial climate, they would expect to be be stronger now!

And this would increase excitement how?  Galway playing Cavan?  Division 1 team playing a Division 3 team.  If we beat Galway and Galway are beaten by Tipperary, Galway would want the old system back.

Only one team can win the AI and the rollercoaster ride that was Wicklow this year, Monaghan last year surely shows that the current system is working quite well.

thank you denn forever for spouting sense here.
our club championship this year tried a "champions league"  format and it was a damp squib, no intensity or excitement until... you guessed it - the knock out stages!

[Keyser soze]

I fail to understand the continual espousing of a champions league format for the AI SFC by people on this board, what is this meant to acheive?

It doesn't matter what format you come up with, weak teams will not win anything because they are not good enough, it's got nothing to do with the format of the competition. Posters come on wailing that the div 3 & div 4 teams have no chance of winning the AI and that it's a carve up for the big guns in Div 1. Well HELLO - it's because they are the better teams!! Givng bad teams the chance to get beat 3 times or 7 times instead of the current twice will improve them how?

The purpose of competition is to ensure that the best teams will win, so far the qualiifer system has generally thrown up the strongest teams in the quarters and semis, no further amount of tinkering will change this.

[Onlooker]

I agree with Mid Louth.  The way for weaker to improve teams is through the National League.  Put in a decent effort in the League and try and get promotion to a higher division.  You will not make progress in Division 4.

[Zulu]

I fail to understand the continual espousing of a champions league format for the AI SFC by people on this board, what is this meant to acheive?

It doesn't matter what format you come up with, weak teams will not win anything because they are not good enough, it's got nothing to do with the format of the competition. Posters come on wailing that the div 3 & div 4 teams have no chance of winning the AI and that it's a carve up for the big guns in Div 1. Well HELLO - it's because they are the better teams!! Givng bad teams the chance to get beat 3 times or 7 times instead of the current twice will improve them how?

The purpose of competition is to ensure that the best teams will win, so far the qualiifer system has generally thrown up the strongest teams in the quarters and semis, no further amount of tinkering will change this.

And who exactly is saying different?

And this would increase excitement how?  Galway playing Cavan?  Division 1 team playing a Division 3 team.

Eh? Didn't Galway and Kerry play a division 4 team this year and weren't both nearly beaten by that same division 4 team, which was of course Sligo?

The reason many people, myself included, want to see an end to the provincial championships, or at least an end to their connection to the AI series is because it isn't the best format, in fact it might just be the worst one. All this talk of giving teams who can't win AI's the chance of winning something is nonsense. The only teams that rate provincial championships are teams that rarely win them, so should we persist with an unbalanced format, with many counties hampered by historically stronger neighbours and an IC scene that makes playing regular club games all but an impossibility to allow the likes of Louth or Leitrim to (maybe) win a provincial title once every 50 or 60 years?

[Zulu]

I've said it before, but I'd link the league with the championship and I'd probably play the championship as a straight knockout. Your league position would dictate your seeding so seed 1 (division 1 winner) would play seed 32, seed 2 would play seed 31 and so on. The league is the perfect format, teams of equal ability are playing each other week in week out but unfortunately it is treated as some sort of after thought. So if we can link your league performance to an easier run in the championship teams would treated it seriously. The first round of the championship would have some poor games but many of the games would be 50/50, all of them would be do or die and the championship would have a definitive format and would only take 5 rounds but yet every team in the country would get at least 8 (7 league and 1 championship) competitive games. And in this format even the last games of the league would be important for even mid table teams as getting one place higher could mean avoiding a better team.

[ONeill]

The provincial councils will never agree to it and neither will the smaller counties.

That sums it up. It's outdated and illogical, but too many have financial gains to be made from it and then there's the romantic model.

In the last 2 years, the All-Ireland champs didn't win one provincial game. It's meaningless.

[DUBSFORSAM1]

There is nothing wrong with the provincial championships as it gives a lot of teams the oppurtunity to win a trophy which they won't do in the CL format....all you have to see is its the same teams year in year out in that as well...

To stop teams thinking the backdoor is acceptable you have to make it far harder to make it through the backdoor and far more beneficial to win the provincial title...

4 provincial winners play each other....2 losers then play the 2 teams out of the qualifiers......the provincial winners who lose then play the qualifiers in their own home pitch...

[Zulu]

fail to see how this would have an impact on anything, the weaker teams are usually gone out of the championship by round three, so what difference does it make if these teams are gone in one week or three weeks. Still plenty of time to run off club games in the counties that are out. What are you aiming to achieve with these changes if they ever got put into practice other than a steam line system?

Your a bit fixated on the weaker counties ML, I don't think any competitive format should concern itself with 'helping' weaker counties. But it should provide every team with an equal chance of winning it and it should ideally provide supporters with as many full blooded contests as possible. By the way ML many weaker football counties are strong hurling ones so getting knocked out of the football early doesn't mean club games can power ahead.

Before you can decide on a solution you have to define what the problem is, and the problems as I see it are as follows;

1. Too many meaningless IC games where neither team is too bothered about the result, the O'Byrne Cup etc. and leagues being particularly guilty of this. However the provincials are steadily moving in this direction, do you think Tyrone, Dublin, Cork or Kerry will be overly disappointed if they get knockout of their provincial championships early?

2. No set structure to IC season, club fixtures are dependent on club results, with CB's rushing many games through if the county team is knocked out of the provincial championships. I give out about CB's more than most and they do make a bollocks of club fixtures but the IC structure makes it very difficult for them and this is before you consider minor and U21 or the two codes.

3. Different teams have different levels of difficulty every year to get to the same point in the championship, I don't need to elaborate on this surely.

4. Some counties are being held back by the system, e.g Limerick, they may very well have played in CP on AI QF or SF day by now only for the fact that they have to beat at least one if not two of the top three counties in Ireland every year. I know some of those players and I know what a big game in CP would mean to them.

If a team or county fails treat the league with some sort of serious effort then they are stupid and need to work on that. It defies logic that teams don't see there is a relationship between those that do well in the league and those that do well in the championship.

That's not really true, when teams are experimenting, and in some cases doing heavy training the week of matches you can't correlate league performance with championship.  Kerry did well in both Derry didn't, Cork did well in both Monaghan didn't, Sligo did well in both Limerick didn't and that's only this year.

If the GAA are concerned about the standard of football in weaker counties and to improve that, then they should take the model that Dublin hurling used in the last number of years, adapt it for football and use it in several counties to see if it works. Letting counties such as my own pander around in the darkness and to try and help ourselves is pointless. There is obviously some sort of a failing in the way we teach football or the kind of player we attract, but can't see it ourselves. Personally I think it goes down to the schools, we've a good primary school programme but once a player reaches secondary school then nothing. We've four schools in Dundalk making up one schools team, that a choice of nearly 700 odd boys and we've done well one year out of it.

I agree but that's a separate issue from this discussion.

There is nothing wrong with the provincial championships as it gives a lot of teams the opportunity to win a trophy which they won't do in the CL format

It doesn't really and that's the point but even if it did is that reason enough to persist with it considering it's many weaknesses?

To stop teams thinking the backdoor is acceptable you have to make it far harder to make it through the backdoor and far more beneficial to win the provincial title...

4 provincial winners play each other....2 losers then play the 2 teams out of the qualifiers......the provincial winners who lose then play the qualifiers in their own home pitch...

That still doesn't create a proper structure to our IC season and it doesn't tackle the fact that IC players can play somewhere between 80-95% of their games without really trying/needing/wanting to win and it doesn't tackle the fact that Munster and Connacht are easier routes to the QF than Ulster and Leinster or the fact that 12 teams are competing for one QF berth while only 5 are competing for another one.

[Zulu]

I agree, a big day out in Croke Park can mean a hell of a lot of some counties and Limerick do have a tough route, but a new structure doesn't mean they'll get their day. 

Nor should it, but why should some counties be forever forced to face a harder/easier route than others, why should Mayo and Galway only have to be one of the 2 best teams out of 5 to get to the business end of the championship while your own county have to be one of the two best out of 12?

I'd definitely agree about the winter league competitions, I think they are pointless and they'd be better to start the league early and give a good break before the championship to play club games. County managers might not agree but you cannot please everyone.

I'd scrap the O'Byrne etc. and start the league later so that once the final round of league games are played you'd only have a week, 2 max, before the championship starts. That's 7 weeks of games for the league and week break and then 10 weeks approx. to play the championship, so that's about 18/19 weeks to play the whole lot. So lets say 5 months, - April to early September (or thereabouts). League is April, May and early June, so by July most teams in the country are out of the championship. And all games are winner takes all. So to sum up the improvements this system (or some variation of it) will bring;

1. Clear definite structure to IC championship.

2. 16 counties will have some of June and the rest of the summer to play club games and 24 counties will have July onwards to play club games. Hurling will be run on a similar format and simultaneously with the football so most counties will be out of both by July.

3. Every game an IC player plays will have some meaning, getting out of division 2 for example will mean you can only get a division 4 team rather than a division 3 one. Likewise getting relegated from division 1 is to be avoided as you'd get someone like Limerick in the first round (based on the likely winner of next years division 4) and the increasing chance of getting someone tough the following year.

4. Variety & intensity, as it is we are almost certain to get another two Cork/Kerry games next year, Dublin in the Leinster final, Tyrone in the Ulster final and at least one of Mayo or Galway in the Connacht final and all after a series of games that most of these teams aren't too bothered about winning. Under my system all the league games will mean something so we'd see far less 'experimentation' in the league and therefore better games. And after the first round of the championship you'd theoretically have the top 16 teams in the country playing out the championship in an open draw format.

There isn't a perfect format as it is impossible to cater for various teams where there is massive player crossover, e.g club and county, U21 and senior but this is, IMO, a much better format than what we have currently.

In addition to changing the format and bring in a rule that you can only play and train at one level, so if you are 17 and good enough for your senior county team you don't play minor or U21. This ensures more players can play county and one or two very talented lads aren't getting pulled from pillar to post while holding up the vast majority of club players competitions.

Hard decisions need to be made and we have to stop trying to be all things to all men, because at the end of the day we are getting nothing right.

[SomebodyFixDublinGAA]

I agree, a big day out in Croke Park can mean a hell of a lot of some counties and Limerick do have a tough route, but a new structure doesn't mean they'll get their day. 

Nor should it, but why should some counties be forever forced to face a harder/easier route than others, why should Mayo and Galway only have to be one of the 2 best teams out of 5 to get to the business end of the championship while your own county have to be one of the two best out of 12?

That is probably the main reason why i wud bring this system in. Kerry and Cork are almost always automatically a game away from the quarter finals. Any fair competition should be completely randomized. That way everyone gets a fair honest crack at it.

And once again, the provincial is becoming uninteresting now with the back-door. However the National League was always uninteresting even though id go to a lot of the games to see how teams are getting on (but thats really all it has to offer). So why not play the provincial in its place? That way you've two competitive, exciting tournaments and the important provincial tradition is kept.