Would you be in favour of a second tier?

[Milltown Row2]

Yeah to be honest that kind of thing creates a much deeper problem related to big cities- e.g. for country clubs with players living in the bigger cities. Travelling to training is time consuming and a pain in the arse at times. I know from about 10 years of experience of it lol.

Complete pain in the hole, but the likes of Antrim, its an hour at its longest journey Belfast to Ballycastle or Cushendall... That's a choice for players, you can't blame the City clubs for being in the city, that's just the way it is and has been for over a 100 years.. Derry must be the exception in all of this.

What Dublin club would travel the longest, distance wise to Dublin? And in all my time driving through Dublin, I rather take 40 minutes up the country than travel through that place

[imtommygunn]

Yeah some Dublin clubs are likely a further drive timewise from the city than bottom to top of antrim.

(FYI I don't blame the city clubs however don't agree it's a choice. Your club is part of you so you don't ditch it(without good reason) just because there's a long drive...)

[Milltown Row2]

Yeah some Dublin clubs are likely a further drive timewise from the city than bottom to top of antrim.

(FYI I don't blame the city clubs however don't agree it's a choice. Your club is part of you so you don't ditch it(without good reason) just because there's a long drive...)

Exactly, I'd never move from my club, even though I'm 20 minutes from it 

[Rossfan]

Looking more like a County first in 2021

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/1211/1183877-july-football-final-due-as-county-first-season-backed/

[armaghniac]

Looking more like a County first in 2021

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/1211/1183877-july-football-final-due-as-county-first-season-backed/

My only observation on this is about Covid. The modest crowds at club games are more likely to be allowed before the bigger crowds at county games and at lest for 2021 this might be an issue.

[seafoid]

I would yeah

Dubs in tier 1
Everyone else in tier 2

[sligoman2]

Looking more like a County first in 2021

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/1211/1183877-july-football-final-due-as-county-first-season-backed/

I like the idea, at least club players know when the season will start and end rather than being held to ransom by provincials, back doors etc..  I hope it goes through.

[Hound]

Looking more like a County first in 2021

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/1211/1183877-july-football-final-due-as-county-first-season-backed/

I like the idea, at least club players know when the season will start and end rather than being held to ransom by provincials, back doors etc..  I hope it goes through.

I'd be happy to see how it goes, but IMO, it's fixing something that's not broken in many counties

[Rossfan]

Only question for 2021 is will Cub or County be played first.
I think it's a given that the "split season" will be adopted for 22 onwards.
It's flavour of the month after the successful Club championships played over the Summer and hard to see a case against it.
It's normalising what was in effect the norm in most Counties anyway.
Only difference is County lads won't be playing Club league games now except the last 2 or 3 if their County is finished for the year.
Will the weaker County teams  be able to improve if their playing season consists of 4 months?

[reillycavan]

Only question for 2021 is will Cub or County be played first.
I think it's a given that the "split season" will be adopted for 22 onwards.
It's flavour of the month after the successful Club championships played over the Summer and hard to see a case against it.
It's normalising what was in effect the norm in most Counties anyway.
Only difference is County lads won't be playing Club league games now except the last 2 or 3 if their County is finished for the year.
Will the weaker County teams  be able to improve if their playing season consists of 4 months?
[/quote
Let club play first instead waiting 8 months for championship game.

[seafoid]

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/sean-moran-gaa-has-a-big-decision-to-make-on-championship-reform-1.4607095

Sean Moran: GAA has a big decision to make on championship reform
Choice will essentially be – rejig the provinces or bring the league into the summer



 
What does the GAA want to be? The question and its answer go to the heart of what happened on the first weekend of championship. Opening day was Saturday and a spate of beatings that emphasised the gulf between competing counties.

Five matches across three provinces and two championships culminated in a combined winning margin of 93 points – well over 18 per fixture.

It can be argued that this is a bit random and unrepresentative given that Sunday's fixtures were a lot more competitive, but it was hardly unprecedented for the GAA championship to start so underwhelmingly and can it simply be glossed over as one of those things that can happen?

Firstly, the GAA condition. Public interest ensures that the focus on Gaelic games is always on the big intercounty competitions. They are the activities that get most attention with sponsors' advertisements and broadcasters' promotion. Yet the core business of the association is as a community sporting organisation based in 2,000 or so clubs around the country and the world at large.

Of course a central part of that existence is the provision of competitive on-field activities, which impact on the public interest. By the nature of these things vast numbers of clubs have no realistic prospect of regular success even within the graded championships.

I remember former GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail in a speech launching the five-year plan of Cuala, then All-Ireland hurling champions, that in his own club Drumgoon when they spoke of championship wins, they meant actual matches rather than titles.

Jarlath Burns, a presidential candidate and former Armagh captain, made the same sort of point when talking about what drives clubs in competitions which they have little chance of winning. He said that the motivation is to do something notable, be it simply beat a better fancied team, win a first round or whatever.

His own club Silverbridge has a modest history with high points being an intermediate championship, a first division title and sundry similar achievements. Down the road is Crossmaglen with their six All-Irelands and yet Silverbridge is as vital a part of their community with a stunning clubhouse despite not troubling the trophy engravers that often.

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This is commonplace in amateur sport. A club's or a team's sense of itself is not exclusively tied to silverware.

This might be the case at intercounty level but for the fact that it is a world far more in tune with professional sport. Its most visible presence is in the coverage on national television and the major competitions and All-Ireland finals. It has become, like it or not, a 'product' for broadcasters rather than in the old days, simply a championship that allowed the cameras in for it handful of big days.

Widespread exposure
That meant that the casual followers got to see the most important matches, which were generally the most competitive and exciting – and not the likes of Sligo-Mayo and fixtures as likely to attract the interest of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports as a rapt TV audience.

By professional standards the GAA championship is not built for widespread exposure. The counties by size and resources are grossly divergent and nearly all know their fate in advance. Why do they persevere? Ask Drumgoon and Silverbridge.

Amateur sports were founded on knockout formats, as they didn't need the regular income stream of league-based competitions. Knockout appeals to the 'have a go' mentality even if the giantkillers have no notion of winning the competition and few expect to replicate the feat.

At present the GAA is trying to manoeuvre what is an amateur arrangement into professional packaging and from a certain stage it works very well, but it also contains the seeds of days like last Saturday.

There are two gripes with the proposed Tier 2 championship. One is that counties don't want to be involved, not just because of the status it signifies but because the dream of a big day dies with it. Secondly, the mechanism for tiering creates resentment because there isn't a clean division between top and bottom.

In the league just concluded, the Ulster and Munster champions were relegated to next year's Division Four by Wicklow and Longford respectively. The main reason for that, however, was the history-making identity of the 2020 provincial championships, which were an outlier compared to recent years.

In 2019, the previous season to have an All-Ireland qualifiers section, for instance, of the 67 matches played just five saw a county beat opponents from a higher division.

Hurling incorporates tiered championships but it has no history of open competition and so no counties with significant days in the past, wanting to stay involved.

Football does. Just two counties, Wicklow and Fermanagh, have yet to win a single senior provincial championship. For many it may all be as far in the past as wrist watches but that sense of themselves is there.

How do you force that sensibility into a conventional competition structure? There is universal acceptance of the league divisions and the concept of winning your way up the pecking order but championship is different.

The GAA has a big choice to make later this year with a view to reforming the championship: essentially, rejig the provinces or bring the league into the summer. It will have to decide what it wants its competitions to be.

In the meantime, the beatings will continue.

smoran@irishtimes.com

[Louther]

Good article that.

GAA need to decide what it wants to be. For years it's been trying to be everything for everyone and not getting close, changing direction again and again and again. Not everyone can win but there should be victories for them in their own right.

No future in current football championship in any of its current guises, the only competition in any GAA code that tries to put everyone in same competition.

[Rossfan]

Imagine going to a County Convention proposing to abolish the Senior, Inter and Junior grades and having 1 County Championship?
Ya'd  be laughed out if it.

[trailer]

Just two counties, Wicklow and Fermanagh, have yet to win a single senior provincial championship. For many it may all be as far in the past as wrist watches but that sense of themselves is there.

This is a key line. Like what right have Fermanagh to be in same competition as Dublin or Kerry? They've never done anything of any significance and along with Antrim are a regular laughing stock in Ulster.
Make the league the new Championship and use the provincials as a warm up campaign to blood youth. 

[imtommygunn]

Fermanagh have produced some very good teams and players this century. If there were more than one tier then currently they should be in tier 2 but you are disrespecting them a bit there and unfairly so. McGrath and Owens would have made most Tyrone teams including the AI winning ones. They got to a replay in an AI semi which they arguably could have won and have been to a few provincial finals.