The "pointless" NFL

[Eamonnca1]

Lots of bling but no bang
By Ewan MacKenna - Monday, February 04, 2013

It took just a few sentences, but in those few seconds Jimmy McGuinness managed to depressingly sum up the next three months.

Standing in a cramped corridor under the Cusack Stand on Saturday night, the first real game of 2013 had barely drawn its final breath and the Donegal manager wore a gentle smile as he spoke. This is a man that hates losing so much he'd essentially been unemployed for the past two years, devoting all his time to winning. But here and now, defeat didn't bother him, and little wonder. "We're probably at 65-to-70%," he said. "It's not something to get overly carried away with. We want to get enough points to stay in the division."

His honesty had just launched the league — one of the most pointless competitions in sport.

The start of the season should be a showpiece occasion but despite the valiant efforts of both the GAA and Dublin County Board in trying to make it a spectacle, these games aren't, and under the current format they never will be. It's not that the standard is bad, rather that high-end sport is largely about winning and losing. Without the brutal choice between exhilaration and devastation for all stakeholders, it's boring. Yet the majority of 112-round-robin games will be played out with a mentality McGuinness and others openly admit to: it's better to avoid the drop while finding one or two players and honing tactics than it is to win out with the tried and tested.

What's worse is, on average an inter-county side plays just over 11 competitive games per year. However over seven of those will be in this competition. In short, close to twice as many games that don't matter are played out as games that do. But we are so wrapped up in familiarity that there is no contempt for the league, rather an acceptance of mediocrity and a waste of time and talent.

Consider this — while fans of other sports get regular high-profile matches that matter, and while players, managers and backroom teams in other sports work and train to test themselves at the highest level, we don't get that in football. The best teams may all have finally rode in and hitched up in Division One, but still we must wait until August before they challenge one another. It makes no sense. Instead, what we got on Saturday night was what we already knew before Saturday night. Dublin are deeper than most in terms of talent, Kildare are very good but have enough flaws and problem positions to stop them being great, Donegal aren't fit, and after dominating the league recently Cork finally realised it isn't worth their while to do so again.

Any competition of importance involves hitting the ground running however the champions of the last three years have done no ball work. Instead, a side that has been back just over two months are in the gym on Tuesdays, doing fitness work on Thursdays and are expected to fit in another day of weights themselves. It explains the ball striking of Colm O'Neill and Donnacha O'Connor and explains why so few from Cork were troubled by it. Indeed on Saturday, Conor Counihan's dummy team was actually stronger than his named team, which sums up so much. As for the best team in the nation, Donegal are only back training less than four weeks, and while they were subjected to a gruelling schedule of workouts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays after returning from Dubai, it's all been to catch up on lost time rather than get ready for a tilt at a competition that dominates the inter-county calendar in terms of the number of games played.

Who can blame them? Of the 40 teams that have reached provincial finals in the last five seasons, only 12 reached any league final that same season. In the past three years, the All Ireland semi-finalists have won just 58% of round-robin league games. There's little correlation between championship class and league form because there's little interest.

Right now in football, there are so many exciting questions, from what Mick O'Dwyer can do with Clare, past dark horses like Laois and Monaghan and Roscommon, all the way up to how Jimmy McGuinness double-jobs at the top. There's an exciting tactical revolution taking place. There's a middle-class of teams that have never been as good at any point in football history. There's better preparation and higher standards. Sadly though we waste all of that over the next few months and must wait until 65% of intercounty games are out of the way before we can enjoy what we have. In the meantime McGuinness and others will battle it out not to be the worst, rather than trying to be the best. Something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Would the leagues really be missed if they were scrapped?  Would they not make a bit of room for club competitions?  Or if you had a larger number of smaller divisions would you not increase the value of each game and increase the number of promotion-relegation contests and spice it up a bit?

Thing about the league is that it has better competitive balance than the championship.  In the championship it's an accident of geography that decides if you're up against somebody who's at your standard or someone who plays at such a dizzily high standard that they're going to obliterate you, and in the case of hurling that often means teams can't even enter the competition.  At least with the league there's a promotion-relegation structure that gives developing counties a pathway to the top, they can work their way up.

[Farrandeelin]

Some boys want to scrap every competition.

True, I like the leagues. It gets away from the local tribalism associated with provincial championship matches. Saying that though, I'd still like an open-draw non seeded 32 county All-Ireland championship. No provincials if you all get me.

[Orior]

Some boys want to scrap every competition.

True, I like the leagues. It gets away from the local tribalism associated with provincial championship matches. Saying that though, I'd still like an open-draw non seeded 32 county All-Ireland championship. No provincials if you all get me.

I'd like an Open Draw too.

We all thought we'd miss the hurling provinicials, but they exist in name only.

[Ard-Rí]

It gets away from the local tribalism associated with provincial championship matches.

Is there something wrong with local tribalism? You know, just cause the whole organisation is based on it and everything, no biggie. 

[Syferus]

The GAA really need to herd up the managers and layers and drill into them the importance of never diminishing the league to the media, it just hurts the whole product and perception of it when the campaigns tell you to 'Unexpect the Expected' and then the expected creeps out of teams' mouths.

[bennydorano]

Some boys want to scrap every competition.

Streamline the whole process down to tossing a coin, save a lot of time & money.

[DuffleKing]

League performances need to be rewarded in the championship.

When we go to Champions league format, the league should determine championship seeding

[Zulu]

It's quite simple, all senior IC games should matter and the only way to do that is link them all to the All Ireland. There are two suggestions I like, either have 4 groups of but based on the American football set up where you play all your 'divisional' rivals and some teams from the other divisions or play your league and seed teams based on league performance with seed 1 playing seed 32 etc. in the first round. Both these systems give all teams plenty of games but not many dead ringers, the league version in particular, and we have a much better, totally structured season.

[ONeill]

Get rid of league and provincials. Inter-county June, July and August & September - 4 leagues, 8 teams. Club - October, November, Feb, March, April & May.

Up Ulster.

[gwan-ye-boy-ya]

scrap the league if 'nobody is bothered'. start an open championship in march/april through september. meaning more games for weaker counties. more games for the fans . everyone will be bothered then.

[ross4life]

I read this about month ago i guess it goes with this thread.

The Warm Glow of the Winter Leagues


The Championship is the only GAA competition that matters. We all know that. The Association does its best to advertise the National League but real GAA people know those three (four if you count Division 2) Leagues in a row were cold comfort to Cork last year and the year before. To what end, then, are the Winter Leagues? What purpose do they serve?

Who currently has the McGrath Cup on their mantelpiece? Who dusts the McKenna Cup? Who could recognise the O'Bryne Cup if they saw it in a pawnbroker's window? And how can the boys on the comma-tee bring their wives shopping in New York City if the winners of the Irish branch of the FBD League refuse to travel?

Three-pipe problems, all. But your correspondent remains a fan of the winter leagues, be they ever so humble. They fulfill, almost by accident, a purpose that the professional competitors of the GAA do so well – the winter leagues make the fans happy.

The GAA, being an amateur organisation, is often at a promotional disadvantage compared to professional sports. The GAA prioritises players over spectators, while the professional sports know that spectators must come first if money is to be made.

The GAA Winter Leagues are the only competitions in the GAA where the spectator comes first. Not, of course, the inflatable shamrock-wavers; such delicate flowers would look out of place in such theatres as Ballinmore, Co Leitrim, Ballinlough, Co Roscommon or Tuam, the true heart of Galway football.

No, these delighted fans are the hardcore, the proper GAA people who have been on bread and water since five to five on the third September, with nothing to console them in the long dark nights only soccer players beyond in England, hugging and kissing after scoring goals and otherwise acting the maggot.

For that small but devoted brand, the winter leagues are like a sort of AA meeting where you can not only confess your terrible additions and hopeless needs, but also be safe in the knowledge that, while you are fallen, you are among a community that know and understand your pain.

A GAA person attending a Winter League game is like a man going to an AA meeting, declaring that he used to drink a pint of bleach with a meths chaser just to get the motor running, and being greeted with knowing and rueful smiles. I spent more nights barefoot in skips than in my own bed in 1983, declares a man at the back of the stand. When the rats came for me during the DTs, they ran away again, laughs another happy soul. I just like a glass of wine with my dinner, mutters a girl through clenched teeth, carefully adjusting her pashmina as the players warm up at the town goal.

You could say that it's only at the winter league games that the GAA person is ever truly at peace. There's no peace to be had in going to the Championship games. Championship games are fraught with anxiety, less so now in the back door era but still very real for the majority of counties.

National League games are meaningless in themselves but always at the back of the mind of the GAA person is the narrative arc, the presence of the big picture that can be as foreboding as it is enticing. If we never get out of Division Four there is no way we'll return to glory. If that young fella can carry this form into the summer we might keep it kicked out to them, for a start. If, if, if. Those nagging doubts can never be cleared from the mind as spring moves slowly into summer.

But in the winter leagues the year stretches long ahead. You're out of the house, and already the cold air is making you feel better about the Christmas excesses. Whereas before your head was annoyed with the most unspeakable muck on telly – and you wouldn't mind the English stations, but our own! Our own! Is this what I pay the license fee for? – now you're looking at the tantalising prospect of this year being The Year, , that Magical Year for which you've waited since you were a child.

There's a few lads up from minor that you're looking forward to seeing. Some lad is back from Australia – covered in tattoos, the hoor, but he was a good one before he left. And can your full-forward work off that condition before the Championship begins?

No gourmand sitting before a dinner cooked by Nigella Lawson herself ever licked his lips as happily as the GAA person at a winter league game, when hope springs eternal in the mud, the cold and the rain. God bless them all, and good luck to them.

http://spailpin.blogspot.ie/2013/01/the-warm-glow-of-winter-leagues.html

[Farrandeelin]

It gets away from the local tribalism associated with provincial championship matches.

Is there something wrong with local tribalism? You know, just cause the whole organisation is based on it and everything, no biggie.

Nothing wrong with local tribalism. Just it offers an escape from it from Feb to April.

[ONeill]

Get rid of league and provincials. Inter-county June, July and August & September - 4 leagues, 8 teams. Club - October, November, Feb, March, April & May.

Up Ulster.

Completely disagree. This article sums it up for me:

Hail to the League we love more than we can ever let on

KEITH DUGGAN

SIDELINE CUT: Hail to the GAA National Football League! To the perpetually poor cousin of The Championship, that fancy-dan summer show with its hot days and its history, its corporate boxes and six course lunches and its eternal parades. The League doesn't need any foppery: you take it as you find it. The League is blue-collar. If Bruce Springsteen lived in Ireland, he'd be a League man.

To that most unloved and under-appreciated sports competition in the world, of which managers and players alike claim that while they wouldn't mind winning it, nobody remembers it.

But some do! The guy from Monaghan or Kerry or Waterford who was, in 1985 or 1998 or 2009, given his League debut somewhere Godforsaken and taken off after 43 minutes just because he fumbled a couple of balls and the manager's eye glazed over him for the rest of the League before he was finally "released" from the panel for the summer, after which he lost interest; he will remember the League for the rest of his life.

To the only concession to directions to obscure country grounds being a cardboard sign stuck to a telephone post with the word 'MATCH' in marker below an arrow pointing to a road that doesn't exist.

To the wonderfully lawless way in which people ditch their cars in hedgerows, gateways, on double-yellow lines and know they will get away with it because it is the League.

To the outlandish hats and caps (from all eras) which Irish people wear with abandon on those League Sundays when the temperature is hovering around zero and the wind is cutting. Anything goes when it comes to League headwear. Tokyo Fashion Week wouldn't be in it.

To the young lads who meet scandalised punters with a flinty eye as they charge four notes for a "programme" which consists of a folded sheet of A4 paper still warm from the printing machine.

To the polystyrene cups of tea filled to the brim, leaving no room for milk so patrons get a severe scalding when they take their first sip. (And to the etiquette observed by fans of both counties who share with scrupulous politeness the one spoon supplied to service the sugar requirements of several thousand Gaels).

To the way everyone crowds into the Stand for warmth except for the two lads on the terrace leaning into the gale, just to the left of the town-end goal. Because that's where they always stand.

To the way the Amhrán Na bhFiann always sounds as if it is being played on a vinyl record circa 1972.

To the way that in Tuam Stadium, it is still 1966.

To being able to hear the manager shouting at his players.To being able to hear what the players shout back.

To being alarmed at the realisation they are mostly just cursing at each other.

To the bravery of the linesmen, who always look peculiarly naked during the League, running up and down with their flags and trying to ignore the heckling.

To the unexpected privilege of seeing a once-in-a-generation star like Michael Donnellan or Brian McGuigan make his debut in the League.

Trippy departures

To the trippy departures of the League, where the one rule is that while very little usually happens, anything may happen. Banks of fog, hail storms, melees and fights, crazy scorelines, power cuts, seven and eight red cards, unexpected classics; anything goes in the League.

To the small band of fans who make a winter pilgrimage out of the League. To the Dubs who never cease to wonder that people actually willingly live outside the capital and book a hotel or BB in Tralee or Castlebar or Omagh just to experience what that must feel like.

They always have a good night and wouldn't swap the League for anything.

They know what all True League fans know: the All-Ireland championship is just for dilettantes and shapers.

To the way the big stars will stand on the field for anything up to half an hour on the field signing jerseys.

Military speed

To the military speed with which the crowd vanishes after League games in Aughrim or Tullamore, the stadium empty in five minutes flat.

To the noble and lonely sight of a losing manager after a League game, carrying his own gear bag as he exits the dressing room (and sometimes even turning off the lights) and trying to convince the awaiting press men that losing three matches on the trot signifies nothing.

To the groundsman and the way he will appear at the door of the press box when his stomach is rumbling tea-time and jingle his keys suggestively before asking the questions which for decades have announced last orders in GAA press boxes across Ireland: "Have ye no homes to go to?" "Will ye be long, lads?" "Is it a book ye're writing?"

To the ghostly magnificence of storied GAA stadiums – Semple Stadium or the Gaelic Grounds or Clones or Nowlan Park – when they are empty and it is too dark to see the pitch and it becomes easy to imagine the many great players who have thrilled thousands of people, right there.

To the mathematics which come into play towards the end of the League, when promotion and relegation is all that anyone cares about.

To the Hidden Signs: the first inkling your team might do something special this year. League games are choc-a-bloc with hidden signs.

To the crushing disappointment (something close to shame) t all relegated teams and supporters experience. And to the brief elation of "promotion".

To Division Four, the most neglected division in all of world sport.

To the impatience that governs the League final, when all counties are already training for the championship and the two teams in the final feel slightly guilty about being there, as if doing something they shouldn't be doing or the unwitting victims of a national hoax.

And so to their declarations that the League doesn't matter: "It's only the League". "Nobody remembers who won the League". "It's nice to win the League but you wouldn't be getting carried away."

To the League, which everyone loves more than they let on.

[Captain Obvious]

Get rid of league and provincials. Inter-county June, July and August & September - 4 leagues, 8 teams. Club - October, November, Feb, March, April & May.

Up Ulster.

Completely disagree.

Fighting the voices in your head?

[GalwayBayBoy]

Get rid of league and provincials. Inter-county June, July and August & September - 4 leagues, 8 teams. Club - October, November, Feb, March, April & May.

Up Ulster.

Completely disagree.

Fighting the voices in your head?