Sport

Rest and compression can elevate the Championship

Provincial champions such as Monaghan should have home advantage in round three of a rejigged All-Ireland Qualifier system<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;">				<br /></span>Picture by S&eacute;amus Loughran&nbsp;
Provincial champions such as Monaghan should have home advantage in round three of a rejigged All-Ireland Qualifier system
Picture by Séamus Loughran 
Provincial champions such as Monaghan should have home advantage in round three of a rejigged All-Ireland Qualifier system
Picture by Séamus Loughran 

MOST sportspeople will be aware of the acronym ‘RICE’. Relating to the treatment of soft tissue injuries, it stands for ‘Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation’.

There’ll probably never be a complete cure for the problems of the inter-county football championships, but RICE could help heal some of them. RICE’s originator Gabe Mirkin (Google tells me) has recently rolled back on the benefits of complete rest and using ice, but I would contend that some rest, compression and elevation would improve the Championship format.

The GAA central council’s proposals to go before congress next month can surely only be part of a devious masterplan to bore people so much that they actually clamour for radical change. Basically, the authorities want to bring back the unloved Tommy Murphy Cup, once again keeping the Division Four teams out of the All-Ireland Qualifiers. The only way for such sides to avoid being cast out into that outer darkness, away from the spotlight and the focus of the TV cameras, is for them to reach their provincial final.

Yet how likely is that for the following counties?: Antrim, Carlow, Leitrim, London, Louth, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow. Sure, one of them would be guaranteed a place in the Qualifiers the next season by winning this new/old competition, but their standards will probably have slipped due to the lack of matches against better opposition, so they’ll be more likely to lose that Qualifier game.

While central council is taking the Qualifiers away from lower-ranked teams with one hand, it suggests handing them an advantage with the other. Included in the proposals is that when any side is drawn against a team from a higher division, the team from the lower division will automatically have home advantage.

On the face of it, that seems good - but arguably, it’s to a team’s advantage in the Championship not to do well in the league. If you’re in a lower division, you’d have a better chance of home advantage come the summer. However, the best way for teams to improve overall is to work their way up through the leagues.

Perhaps the National Football League needs to go back to ‘A’ and ‘B’ sections, but that’s a whole other debate. Equally, if you’re going to have a B championship, whatever you call it, then it should involve 16 counties, or there should be three tiers in the Championship.

Yet there’s little appetite for those formats, so back to RICE. The key element for the good of the entire GAA is ‘compression’ of the inter-county Championships. If we accept that the imbalanced provincial Championship numbers aren’t going to change, then conformity must come in another way - scheduling.

Cavan manager Terry Hyland put it well, commenting: “I think they need to compact the Championship more than anything else, shorten the gap between games.

“It’s strange that we go out in January and play Sunday after Sunday, and then we go out in June and play once every four weeks. The provincial Championship in particular. I think it would solve a lot of the problems for players. County players, at that time of the year, are fully trained up and they’re better off playing. It might just pull back a little bit of the advantage that the big counties in Munster and Leinster have by sitting and not playing until July.”

Given that central council is proposing doing away with replays apart from for provincial and All-Ireland finals, then setting out a regular schedule becomes much easier. All provincial quarter-finals should be completed by the end of May. All provincial semi-finals a fortnight later, by mid-June. And all provincial football finals must be played by the second weekend of July, preferably by the first weekend.

All-Ireland Qualifiers would be reduced to three rounds: The first for the 16 sides that don’t reach the provincial semi-finals; the second for the eight beaten provincial semi-finalists and the eight winners from round one; and the third - this is the major change - for the eight provincial finalists and the eight winners from round two. The eight winners from round three would go into the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

The other important step is ‘elevation’ of the importance of all matches. There has to be some reward for progressing in your provincial Championship and for doing well in the league (rather than being rewarded for finishing lower down).

When it comes to the third round of the Qualifiers, the four provincial champions should be drawn out against the four remaining lowest placed teams from that year’s league. The provincial champions should also be guaranteed home advantage, as a reward for winning their province.

Similarly, the four losing provincial finalists would come up against the four highest-ranked teams that have come through the Qualifiers. Perhaps here, home advantage should go the team that finished higher in the league, although again there’s a case for giving that advantage to the beaten provincial finalists.

At the All-Ireland quarter-final stage, the four provincial champions - or their conquerors - would be drawn against the four other round three winners, to preserve the possibility of those four provincial champs contesting the All-Ireland semi-finals.

My format would remove the provincial champions’ automatic place in the All-Ireland quarter-finals, but they should be good enough to beat low-ranked teams, especially with home advantage. Indeed, provincial champions have been extremely dominant in recent years. Only twice (out of 20 matches) have such sides lost in the last eight in the past five seasons, on both occasions Ulster champions Monaghan succumbing to provincial rivals Tyrone. The past five All-Ireland SFC finals have been contested exclusively by provincial champions. 

The ‘rest’ element is factored in, with at least a fortnight’s gap between games, but not more than three weeks. Eight counties would be free to focus on club football from mid-June, another eight by the end of that month, and eight more by mid-July.

Looking at this year’s calendar, if round one were held on June 11/12, round two on June 25/26, and round three on July 10/17 then it should be possible to have the All-Ireland quarter-finals on July 30/31.

The vast majority of counties would know that inter-county football would be over for them by the end of July; indeed half of them would be gone by the end of June - but all would still have their chance in the Qualifiers.

Division Four teams would know they need to earn promotion to enhance their chances of home Qualifiers - but at least they wouldn’t be complete outcasts.