Club Championships 2025

[ranch]

Everyone I've talked to in Cork is pretty much unanimous that their club competitions have improved hugely from the change to an increased number of tiers with smaller numbers in each tier. I'd love to see all counties (exact the smallest) have 4 tiers in their championships, even though I can't see any county managing to get the votes to ever pass this.

Armagh did something similar with the league structure - the leagues were condensed into divisions of 8 teams (competitive, linked to championship, no dead rubbers and competition is taken seriously)

Also last year brought in a Junior B Championship, somewhat foolishly restricted it to IIs teams only (who were then unceremoniously voted out of the All County Leagues to go and form their own league - make it make sense)

Linked to championship is probably the biggest flaw our league system has. I don't like seeing teams go up a championship grade when they've been unable to win the one below. I also don't like teams being relegated to a lower championship grade when a lack of access to county players throughout the league has a massive bearing on it.

[cynic]

Kerry folks are the smartest football people on the island.  It is always a pleasure to talk football with a Kerryman - genuinely - you always learn something!  There is a lot of football knowledge in the county.  And Kerry doesn't run their unique systems for no good reason.  Of course it gives Kerry teams and Kerry players an advantage; that's the whole point. 

Kerry maintains an artificially-small senior division.  Which means that their "intermediate" division is much closer to senior standard than in any other county, for 2 reasons: (1) some of the teams in it should be in the senior division, and would be senior teams in any other county; and (ii) even the genuine div 2 teams are brought on by regularly playing against senior-standard teams.  And their divisional championship plus club championship is a great help to players from smaller clubs too, as it gives them an opportunity to team up with players from stronger clubs.