Tommy Murphy Cup R.I.P.

[Maguire01]

Has this been posted?  I couldn't see it anywhere.

Tommy Murphy counties back in qualifiers
Apr 13, 2008

Saturday, April 12.

A motion from Wicklow club An Tochar has been overwhelming passed by GAA delegates at Congress 2008 in Sligo this afternoon.

Delegates unquestionably voted in favour of a return to the old Qualifier system for the All-Ireland Football Senior Championship which sees Division 4 (Tommy Murphy Cup) teams make a return in 2009 to the Qualifier series.

Also Wexford's Glynn/Barntown were successful in ensuring that home and away advantage applies to the first round of the All-Ireland Qualifers.

The South-East club moved a motion which now allows that 'where a team is drawn away for the second year running in the first round of the All-Ireland Qualifers, that team receive home advantage. In the event of both teams having been drawn away the previous year, toss for home advantage.'


MOTION 24 - Passed

[Rossfan]

So we'll now have two rounds of qualifiers before the real action starts.
Then two more rounds to get to the Quarter Finals.
The reason why the thing was changed in the first place was  1- to get rid of a load of meaningless and often one sided games and  2- to make more Summer weekends available for club games.
I presume Counties will now NOT want to partake on the TM Cup as it will be a tournamnet for twice beaten dockets.
At least in 2007 and 2008 it was a genuine competition for weaker Counties and could probably have  been improved in status if the winners were let back in to say Round 3 of the Qualifiers.
Now we go down the route of hurling by adopting systems and abandoning them every year or two as some County and Martin Breheny take a dislike to some aspect.

[LaurelEye]

2- to make more Summer weekends available for club games.

Officially, it made one more weekend available for club games.

However... next weekend in Longford was meant to be the start of the Senior leagues with county players available.

But because the Down-Limerick match couldn't be played two weeks ago, it's been refixed for this weekend, the final round of Division 3 has been scheduled for next weekend, and therefore one weekend is no longer available for club games here. I imagine the same story applies in Roscommon with regard to the Armagh-Dublin fiasco.

One weekend of qualifier matches more or less is not going to make that much of a difference to club players - as long as the qualifier dates are known in advance. All Championship matches going to extra-time would be a much bigger difference in terms of freeing up time for the clubs.

The main effect of removing Division 4 counties from the qualifiers was to send a message as to who was worth bothering about in the GAA and who wasn't. The fact that winning the TMC meant absolutely nothing for the following year reinforced the point.

(And in case you think I'm saying this because Longford are currently in danger of being relegated to Division 4, I said all of this on this messageboard at the time when the rule change was brought in.)

[Maguire01]

The main effect of removing Division 4 counties from the qualifiers was to send a message as to who was worth bothering about in the GAA and who wasn't. The fact that winning the TMC meant absolutely nothing for the following year reinforced the point.

Can't agree with that.  How may Division 4 teams ever got more than 1 extra game through the qualifiers? (I don't have the stats, but i'm guessing not too many.)

As for winning the TMC meaning nothing?  Did you watch last years final with Wicklow and Antrim?  It was a pretty good game and played with plenty of passion.  You can't say that the loss didn't hit Antrim at the end - if it was meaningless, they wouldn't have cared.

I also feel that the TMC element has made the top of Div 4/Bottom of Div 3 a lot more interesting for the league as well. As has been suggested, maybe there should be an incentive for winning the TMC - although i don't believe a Q/F place is the answer, as most teams in the TMC would be well of the pace for that stage of the Championship.

[Bogball XV]

The main effect of removing Division 4 counties from the qualifiers was to send a message as to who was worth bothering about in the GAA and who wasn't. The fact that winning the TMC meant absolutely nothing for the following year reinforced the point.

Can't agree with that.  How may Division 4 teams ever got more than 1 extra game through the qualifiers? (I don't have the stats, but i'm guessing not too many.)

As for winning the TMC meaning nothing?  Did you watch last years final with Wicklow and Antrim?  It was a pretty good game and played with plenty of passion.  You can't say that the loss didn't hit Antrim at the end - if it was meaningless, they wouldn't have cared.

I also feel that the TMC element has made the top of Div 4/Bottom of Div 3 a lot more interesting for the league as well. As has been suggested, maybe there should be an incentive for winning the TMC - although i don't believe a Q/F place is the answer, as most teams in the TMC would be well of the pace for that stage of the Championship.

Longford would have been Div 4 the year they beat Derry and gave Kerry a good run, Derry themselves wouldn't have been far off it in 2004 when they reached the All Ireland Semi and there's plenty of other examples of upsets and near misses.
The Murphy cup was a load of shite as everyone knows, this means one extra round of games and gives everyone a fair crack of the whip - i presume the sides relegated to d4 this year however will benefit from this?

[Maguire01]

i presume the sides relegated to d4 this year however will benefit from this?

Delegates unquestionably voted in favour of a return to the old Qualifier system for the All-Ireland Football Senior Championship which sees Division 4 (Tommy Murphy Cup) teams make a return in 2009 to the Qualifier series.

[Bogball XV]

i presume the sides relegated to d4 this year however will benefit from this?

Delegates unquestionably voted in favour of a return to the old Qualifier system for the All-Ireland Football Senior Championship which sees Division 4 (Tommy Murphy Cup) teams make a return in 2009 to the Qualifier series.

Thanks for that Maguire, doesn't actually clarify anything for me, but hey...

[BallyhaiseMan]

good to see Antrim wont have to play in the TM Murphy Cup when they are beaten in the Preliminary Round of the Ulster Championship this year then 

[believebelive]

So we'll now have two rounds of qualifiers before the real action starts.
Then two more rounds to get to the Quarter Finals.
The reason why the thing was changed in the first place was  1- to get rid of a load of meaningless and often one sided games and  2- to make more Summer weekends available for club games.
I presume Counties will now NOT want to partake on the TM Cup as it will be a tournamnet for twice beaten dockets.
At least in 2007 and 2008 it was a genuine competition for weaker Counties and could probably have  been improved in status if the winners were let back in to say Round 3 of the Qualifiers.
Now we go down the route of hurling by adopting systems and abandoning them every year or two as some County and Martin Breheny take a dislike to some aspect.

And here was me thinking that the experiment was scrapped by a democratic majority at congress

[Rossfan]

Didnt Congress adopt a new system for hurling for 2008 but that was overturned by a "Special Congress" which brought in a dog's dinner system this year.
Already the HDC are working on a system to replace that.
Then if some County moans about that our friend Breheny starts a campaign in his columns and next thing Congress delegates get swayed and off we go again.

[TacadoirArdMhacha]

I thought the system worked quite well last year, 4 matches makes the qualifiers very long and drawn out and you end up having a lot of matches that are fairly predictable. The reality is that division 4 teams are simply never going to reach the latter stages of the All Ireland Championships. In any case, if a division 4 team was really likely to reach the latter stages, they had the opportunity to do so by getting to the provincial final. It would be better for their progress to have meaningful games against teams at their level. My one gribe would have been that winning the Tommy Murphy Cup should have guarenteed entry to the qualifiers the following year.

[armaghniac]

The main effect of removing Division 4 counties from the qualifiers was to send a message as to who was worth bothering about in the GAA and who wasn't.

And do all of the counties involved play in the McCarthy cup? Why does it make sense to have a limited number of counties in contention for the hurling, but not for the football. Armagh hurlers are as likely to win an all-ireland as Waterford footballers.

[LaurelEye]

The gaps in standards between the various classes of counties in football are nowhere near the size of the gaps between the various tiers in hurling, so it's not a valid comparison.

[Gnevin]

Understood the fact that some counties have to grind to a complete halt when the Championship starts when other like Dublin play on .

[Bord na Mona man]

The notion behind the football qualifiers was to give non-traditional counties a guarantee of more than more championship match per year.
I don't think it was ever sold as being a safety net for the strong counties and it shouldn't have begun to evolve towards that.