Proposals to change the All Ireland Football structures

[Syferus]

The winner of the proposed D4 Championship should be allowed into the race for Sam - ideally in the round before the Qtr Final.

Laughable that the only thing that all these proponents of change could come up with that could stick enough to be an official proposal is bringing back the Tommy Murphy Cup with the generous carrot of letting the winner into the Quailifers.. the next year.

Nonsense as usual but the only change the GAA could pass is f**king over the minnows of the sport so who knows. I for one hope we never end up back in D4 because you'd be constantly under the threat of being one and done in the championship. Backwards to say the least.

[From the Bunker]

So Division 4 teams are trapped in Limbo? One (or two) of them gets to go into the AI Championship? The rest get to finish their season when ever they can no longer get promoted. This could be after 3 league games. So after 3 games, you could get intercounty players jumping ship and heading to America!

[Catch and Kick]

Welcome to GAA democracy. The Uachataran knows best. What a disastrous decision. No credit to Louth Manager who supports this. ONE Div 4 team will be ALLOWED dine at the top table. Unbelievable. The GAA should make an official statement that they have no interest on anything other than the 8/10 top teams and stop this sham.
Typical GAA fudge - bring ht winners of this mickey mouse comp back in at the QF stage. Taking their logic to it's conclusion shouldn't the teams who win through to the 2nd round and then lose have legit grounds for complaint?
Bulls***t.
Hope the Div 4 teams refuse to participate in this charade.
PS - were the Div 4 teams ever brought together and asked what they think of this suggestion?

[cavanmaniac]

Just like I suspected.  Go  around the houses setting wheels in motion and invite all manner of hard-fought and far-reaching solutions to be submitted, and then throw them all away because they don't have a strong enough conservative dimension or are just too 'radical' to be trusted. So you effectively not only wind up at a place you were more or less already at before you started,  in fact you step backwards to something tried and failed on the past.

Meaningful change in a timely fashion is just impossible in the GAA. 

[Syferus]

The only meaningful change anybody should be focusing on the playing schedule. You can do everything in a far more effective manner than it is currently being done. Too many people focusing on pie in the sky change and trying to conflate fixing the schedule with miss-guided major changes to the senior football championship.

[cavanmaniac]

Misguided? The current debate and process,  dead rubber though it has predictably turned out to be,  was only happening in the first place because of widespread disenchantment with an imbalanced,  iniquitous and yes,  inefficiently run-off championship.  It would improve things too if the running of it was streamlined,  of course you're right,  and club players got a fair crack,  but there was a good opportunity here to ensure more clashes of top teams, maybe enhance the status of the league too,  and it's being allowed to pass in favour of conservative reversion to the status quo,  the main attraction of which is that it's safe,  familiar and offends nobody even if it improves nothing either.

[tippabu]

Can only imagine the proposal of changing the under 21 championship to under 20 and moving it to june/july will absolutely destroy the progress we are making in football. It will be on that the same time as under 21 hurling and unlike minor i cant see anyone being dual player at this level anymore. the way it is run off at the moment suits us perfectly because there is no crossover at all. To "hurling people" in the county we are at a massive crisis when it comes to minor dual players.....we reached two all irelands last year in both, to most this would be a brilliant achievement but because we lost both (mainly the hurling with an unfacied team) there has been a debate going through the winter and as i say alot of people feel it was a disastrous year!!! Hurling management of the minors last year told everyone at the start of the year they would have to choose, nobody could play both, the players told him if they were to be forced they would choose football, a quick u turn was made. I believe similar pressures are being put on this year, hopefully the players can stand up again

[seafoid]

Until the provincial championships are dumped nothing will change.
How about something radical. All money given to Dublin etc goes to a central fund where it is redistributed favouring the weaker teams. Fans are already getting sick of the same 4 and Mayo calving every year.

[From the Bunker]

Until the provincial championships are dumped nothing will change.
How about something radical. All money given to Dublin etc goes to a central fund where it is redistributed favouring the weaker teams. Fans are already getting sick of the same 4 and Mayo calving every year.

Calving?

[Rossfan]

Have any Counties passed motions on any other system to bring to Congress?
How many Qualifier games have D4 teams won against D1,2 or 3 teams since 2001 or in the last 5 years?

[Catch and Kick]

Misguided? The current debate and process,  dead rubber though it has predictably turned out to be,  was only happening in the first place because of widespread disenchantment with an imbalanced,  iniquitous and yes,  inefficiently run-off championship.  It would improve things too if the running of it was streamlined,  of course you're right,  and club players got a fair crack,  but there was a good opportunity here to ensure more clashes of top teams, maybe enhance the status of the league too,  and it's being allowed to pass in favour of conservative reversion to the status quo,  the main attraction of which is that it's safe,  familiar and offends nobody even if it improves nothing either.

I think it offend the 8 counties in Division 4. But they don't matter in the new commercial GAA. Death knell of inter county football in these counties - what player is going to bother hanging around for this fiasco?
There is some warped thinking in the GAA. A prime example is the decision to not give Wicklow or Laois home advantage for their Leinster Championship game, instead fixing it for Kilkenny..... If it is Laois, O Moore Park is more than capable of hosting the game.
Democracy me a***e.

[larryin89]

Easily offended also in denial of reality .

[LCohen]

have there been any decent proposals that retain the provincial championships with the einners straight to the AI Q/Fs?

If not is it not time to slaughter the sacred cow?

[Zulu]

Unless you dump the provincial championships any alternative is most likely a waste of time. Why don't we use the minor and\or the U21 championship to road test some alternative formats that don't involve provincial championships? The only way to find out if an alternative format is better or worse is to give it a go. There is no reason why a sensible alternative format for the U21, for example, would devalue it and if we did it for a 3 year period you could actually assess whether it worked or not.

[Lone Shark]

It's all very well to say get rid of the provincial championships, but for at least 25 of the 32 county teams that line up at the start of the year, winning their provincial championship is a big deal and a big motivation. That only means something because they know that everyone is trying to win it, and if they do come out on top, it'll mean something - it won't mean anything if it's quarantined off as a preseason competition at the start of the year.

Similarly, the attendances reflect this. Approximately 5,000 people attended Offaly vs Longford in O'Connor Park last May, despite the fact that the prize on offer for the winner was a sure fire hammering at the hands of Dublin. When Offaly played Kildare in the qualifiers (a team with nearly five times the population of Longford, nearly all within an hour's drive of Tullamore) the attendance was broadly the same. That's despite the fact that Offaly were coming in on the back of a win, and that the prospect of a deep run through the qualifiers was on offer for the winner - as evidenced by the fact that Kildare eventually got to Croke Park.

I had to laugh at the GPA proposals at the start of the year that suggested that their "champions league" style nonsense, that involved running off the provincial games like a blitz at the start of the year, would generate more revenue - because it was presuming that as many people would go to a Leinster SFC Final match between Meath and Dublin in April, with no connection to the All Ireland series, as would go to it in the height of July.

It's not just the provincial councils that like the provincial championships - supporters like them too. That has to count for something, surely?