SLIGO manager Niall Carew says the creation of a ‘B’ Championship in football would be “an absolute disaster” and believes the debate is not helped by “lazy” analysis of lower-ranked teams from some TV pundits.
After working under Kieran McGeeney in Kildare, Carew spent two years as Waterford manager and is now in his third season with Sligo.
Carew cited the poor crowds in hurling since Championship tiers were created in 2005 and how standards have generally slipped among the smaller counties.
Speaking ahead of Sligo’s All-Ireland Qualifier Round 1A clash with Antrim tomorrow, Carew insists that a ‘B’ Championship simply wouldn’t work.
“It would be an absolute disaster,” he said.
“You’d be able to count the crowd at the Lory Meagher, Nicky Rackard and Christy Ring finals at Croke Park last weekend [estimated 5,000].
“Nobody covers those games. The Sunday Game would cover it the first year, just for the craic but I guarantee you in two or three years' time it’ll be the top eight and that’s the way it’ll be.
“The thing is a ‘B’ Championship wouldn’t work. All you have to do is look at the hurling. Teams are getting worse. Anyone who has played at any level knows the more often you play the top teams the better you’ll get.
“You can see what's happened since the Ulster hurling champions no longer qualify for the All-Ireland series. You had Antrim, Derry and Down – three counties who were able to compete.
“Once you stop playing at that level you’re just going to disappear, literally. That’s what happened to Ulster hurling; they’re not competitive enough.”
Sligo narrowly missed out on promotion to Division Two earlier this year before knocking out New York in a tricky Connacht Championship opener.
A couple of late goals allowed Mayo to put a bit of shine on the final scoreline against Sligo in Castlebar last month which saw the Yeats County exit the provincial series.
“It [‘B’ Championship] is not sexy enough for players to put that big shift in. Sligo versus Mayo was on TV and there was deferred coverage of Donegal versus Antrim.
“If Antrim and Sligo were in a ‘B’ Championship there would be no coverage, no incentive for players. There were 16,000 or 17,000 that went to our game against Mayo; there were 6,000 that watched us in New York.
“If we played Leitrim there would be 6,000 or 7,000 at it. But if we were to play Leitrim in the morning in the ‘B’ Championship there wouldn’t be 500 people at it.”
Media discourse isn’t helped, Carew claimed, when some TV pundits don’t do their research for games featuring lower-ranked counties.
“Some of the pundits that are analysing teams like ourselves are lazy – they won’t put in the work. They don’t analyse players properly.
“On Sky, if Man United were playing Scunthorpe they do their homework on Scunthorpe – I’m only throwing that name out there – but they really analyse the whole thing well.
“Whereas, our pundits are sitting back on their chairs and they’re dismissing teams before they play. They don’t know the players.
“They have these preconceived ideas. I actually think the gap is closing on the bigger teams... Your glass can be half full or half empty. If you want to be negative about it, there are loads of arguments why there should be a ‘B’ Championship, but there are way more arguments, in my opinion, why there shouldn’t be.”
