Football

Kicking Out: Round-robin, back door, knockout? None of them solve the problem

<span style="color: rgb(38, 34, 35); font-family: Arial, Verdana;  font-style: italic; background-color: rgb(244, 244, 244);">Down and Donegal were separated by 16 points on a weekend of mismatches, but one-sided games have become increasingly frequent and there is no 32-team structure for the championship that will solve the problem. Picture by Philip Walsh.</span>
Down and Donegal were separated by 16 points on a weekend of mismatches, but one-sided games have become increasingly frequent an Down and Donegal were separated by 16 points on a weekend of mismatches, but one-sided games have become increasingly frequent and there is no 32-team structure for the championship that will solve the problem. Picture by Philip Walsh.

DONEGAL, Kerry and Mayo won at the weekend by a combined margin of 53 points.

In the 2017 All-Ireland quarter-finals, Kerry, Mayo, Tyrone and Dublin won by a combined margin of 58 points.

The same year, the combined winning tally was 37 points across the four provincial football finals.

The previous summer, the first five victories in the vaunted Ulster football series were achieved by gaps of 6, 11, 8, 19 and 7 points respectively.

See where this is going?

The championship system isn’t ideal. It probably could do with a freshening up. But it’s not what’s actually causing the bleeding.

We have spent years peering at the chemist shelves, arguing over which medicine to administer to ease the suffering of the football championship’s format.

All we’d be doing is giving Calpol to a man lying with his arms half hanging off.

Round robin, back door, straight knockout, provincial championships, they’re all one and the same.

There is no 32-team championship format that eliminates mismatches.

If Kerry weren’t beating a very decent Clare side by 18 points, they’d be doing it to Longford or Leitrim or Fermanagh.

Were there no Leinster championship for Dublin to cruise to, it wouldn’t stop them winning three round-robin games by 15 points apiece.

Mayo hammered Sligo on the weekend and it still wasn’t anywhere near the mauling of their Connacht final in 2015, when Mayo scored 6-25.

County teams could have benefitted from more than one game in the championship but given the impact on clubs, and how 1,000 back door games wouldn’t change Sam Maguire’s destination, it’s not worth cribbing over.

The gap from the top to the bottom is such a black hole that there’s no belt would rein it in.

Football didn’t break because of a one-sided weekend.

It won’t be broken by the predictability of knowing already who two of the provincial champions will be, and being able to narrow the other two provinces down to five teams at the very most.

The sport is in the middle of an important period. Like Andy Dufresne, it has swum through the 500 yards of sewer and come out clean on the other side.

Full-time sweepers have become redundant because the better coaches have learned how to deal with it. The statisticians have shown the perils of conceding the kickout and the brains trust has followed the science.

The way Donegal peeled Down apart on Sunday was frightening. They created such width in attack that Down’s attempts to funnel bodies behind the ball were made redundant.

Each square inch of space was a prisoner for Declan Bonner’s side. It was following the template that Dublin have mastered, and a path down which all the top teams are headed.

When mass defences and slow, methodical counter-attacks aren’t working any more, the only option for weaker teams is to have a cut and see what you can do yourself.

In a segment of a recent chat with Neil McGee that didn’t make it to the final cut for Saturday’s Irish News, the Donegal defender talked about how tough it is to play full-back in the modern game.

“People are saying the standard of defending has gone away down, but I think it’s the opposite. I think teams are spending far more time on the training pitch now working on tactical defending.

“Everything’s stacked against the defender at the minute.

“You look at the rules that are there, the [attacking] mark is in and that alters the way you mark [your man].

“Teams are looking for the loop. Teams are looking for cutbacks. You’re being screened everywhere you look. There’s so much happening.

“The coaching has gone through the roof. Teams won’t kick the ball in 50-50, they’re coached not to. It’s an 80-20 ball at best, and now the mark’s in.

“There was more defensive play 10 years ago but the game has really come forward offensively, and it makes it very, very hard to defend.”

Coming up against well-manned, well-organised defences repeatedly has forced teams to examine how they use the ball in attack. Width is the answer at present.

The teams that are working these things out are the ones continually coming up against the best defences.

If you take where teams will play in the 2022 league into account, of the 17 seasons since 2006, Kerry will have played all 17 in Division One.

Next year will be Dublin’s 16th year in the top flight in that time. It’s 16 for Mayo, and 15 for Tyrone. Donegal will be there for the 12th time in 17 years.

They’re all in the one washing machine, spinning endlessly against each other, the dye of tactical evolutions running through the fabric of Division One football.

It’s an endless cycle of games involving the top teams against themselves. The more often they play each other, the more they improve and the further they leave everyone else behind.

Since 2010, only six teams outside the established elites have survived more than their maiden year after coming up from Division Two. Four of the six were relegated at the end of their second year.

Teams cannot break into the top pile because they aren’t being exposed to the better teams often enough. That’s a flaw of the league structure, not the championship one.

Yet it seems contradictory for football’s solution to lie with breaking up a league structure that keeps producing better games in front of bigger, more engaged crowds than ever.

The league has been football’s best competition by a mile in recent years, but it looks more and more like its biggest problem too.

Where once the four divisions could be hopped between with the chance of a soft landing, now you’d need a flotilla to have any chance of taking your feet in the promised land across the way.

I keep hopping the fence on whether breaking up the provincial championship structures is the right thing to do.

I’m not a traditionalist on it by any stretch of the imagination. Most days, I’m in favour of change.

But it has to be the right change, not just for the sake of it.

The provinces are imbalanced, unfair, antiquated, but they also give the Cavans and Tipperarys and Fermanaghs and Roscommons of the world something to play for, something to win.

Take away the carrot of a provincial title and turf them all into a round-robin All-Ireland, will their fortunes change?

You can change all the championship structures you want because when it comes to it, they won’t solve the problem.

If you go for tiers, breaking into the top tier and staying there will only become even harder still.

For spontaneity, excitement and a shock or two, the straight knockout is best. Yet that doesn’t seem to be what people actually want, when you look at how last year’s All-Ireland semi-finals went.

The only thing that will stop Dublin and Kerry making it to the last four and beyond is making them start with eight men against 15.

A much deeper look needs to be taken into how to balance the competitiveness of football across 32 counties.

And the worry is if you try and fix the problems by taking away provincial championships that give structure and meaning to the inter-county game for 26 of those counties, what shape will football be in 20 years from now?