Sport

Brendan Crossan: Championship tiers will create more problems than they'll solve

Counties like Kerry and Dublin will continue to get stronger especially with the current League structures and the Super 8s
Counties like Kerry and Dublin will continue to get stronger especially with the current League structures and the Super 8s Counties like Kerry and Dublin will continue to get stronger especially with the current League structures and the Super 8s

SOMETIMES you get those moments of clarity when you realise the absolute state of the GAA.

The Super 8s, talk of tiers and a Sky Sports press officer shielding Kieran ‘Star’ Donaghy from a couple of hacks in west Belfast the other week.

What is that all about?

‘How do you think Kerry will do this year, Kieran?’

‘Can Tyrone go one step further than last year?’

‘Are you excited about your new punditry role with Sky?’

Real hard-ball questions, like.

Surely one of those searching enquiries would have stumped the big fella.

And so 'Star' was ushered away from two or three quote-less tape-recorders because he needed to be somewhere else.

Embarrassing stuff altogether.

We imagine the conversation going something like this...

‘Keep your powder dry, Kieran,’ comes the advice.

‘You don’t want over-exposed.’

‘Don't talk to those print guys. Keep them hungry for that conference call in July.’

Jeepers. What just happened?

The GAA is big business nowadays.

Last week, Dublin absolutely hammered Louth in the Leinster Championship 5-21 to 0-10.

It’s all Louth’s fault for being useless.

Stick them in one of those tiers. Any bloody tier.

Banish them all, just like we did to those hurling minnows. Give them throw-in times on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of no-where, as far away as possible from the din of the big houses.

Of course, there is no chatter about Dublin being a runaway train and how that’s having a negative impact on the whole Championship set-up more than hapless Louth.

The Dubs have won five out of the last six All-Ireland titles.

They’re going for five in a row this summer.

How many more All-Ireland titles will it take before the GAA realises part of the problem might be a couple of runaway trains in their midst?

Maybe 10 titles out of 11?

Eighteen out of 20?

With or without foam rollers, Tyrone deserve unbelievable credit for getting so close to the Sky Blue juggernaut over the last few seasons.

Likewise, Mayo and Kerry have performed heroically on a lop-sided field.

The GAA has positioned itself in such a way where it promotes competitions that perpetuate the yawning gap between counties.

The best prescription I've heard came from little-known Sligo footballer Neil Ewing.

While everyone has been too busy lauding the National Football Leagues – from Division One right down to Division Four – Ewing insisted that’s exactly where the GAA’s greatest problem lay in trying to re-balance – if they really wanted to – their premier competition, the Championship.

Ewing argued that facing the likes of Mayo or Galway in the Connacht Championship once a year did nothing for the development of Sligo football.

Counties like Sligo, he says, needed more exposure to the better teams via a League restructure – reminiscent of the old Division 1A and 1B and Division 2A and 2B – in order to increase the competitive nature of the Championship.

“People are talking about Championship structures but the League structures are the problem,” Ewing said. “People say the Leagues are great because the teams of an equal level are playing against each other.

“But I think since the Division One to Division Four came in there’s a situation that has developed that the best five or six teams are constantly Division One and they’re constantly playing against each other and they’re making each other better, whereas the weaker teams are constantly playing each other and they’re probably finding a level that’s below themselves.”

Ewing added: “It’s very disappointing for ourselves when you only play a Division One team once a year. You learn loads of lessons and the week after that you’re trying to implement all those lessons, but you’ve to wait 12 months.”

Creating tiers is not about raising standards – it’s about burying problems.

Ewing’s remedy is radical, too radical for the GAA – but it’s the right one.

Of course, people will say the horse has already bolted. It is what it is.

League football is big business too.

For the GAA’s broadcast partners – whatever ‘partners’ means these days – League football is getting sexier and therefore there is no appetite among the hierarchy to disrupt a good thing, a commercially good thing.

Likewise, the Super 8s is, more than anything else, a manufactured competition for broadcasters essentially, where the big teams play each other more often.

How long before Gaels get fed up with yet another Kerry versus Mayo game or Dublin versus Tyrone?It’s only a matter of time before the Super 8s morph into the Champions League group stages, a lofty playground for the elite.

So the GAA creates tiers.

And by doing so they ensure the weak get weaker and the strong get stronger.

Is that what the GAA is about?

Is that what the GAA has become - a junior partner in TV rights negotiations?

We read John Horan, the GAA President, lamenting the fact that the TV companies – their ‘partners’ – are “driven by numbers” and offers that up as reason for the lack of Joe McDonagh Cup coverage.

Spoken like an innocent by-stander to an accident.

‘GAA Now’ will quieten the rebels.

Surely, the GAA is looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

Tiers aren’t the answer because they won’t raise standards. They are merely stockpiling problems around the country.

Meanwhile, feast your eyes on Division One and the Super 8s. It’s where the money is at…