ONE of the biggest results of last week’s round of National League games was Cavan’s four-point win over Westmeath in Breffni Park.
The several thousand fans filing out of The Athletic Grounds a week earlier would have had Cavan pencilled in for relegation given their miserable showing against Armagh.
The League season was only 70-plus minutes old and Cavan already looked doomed. Armagh ran over the top of them, and Cavan didn’t put up much resistance.
People in Cavan know the absentee list off by heart: Killian Clarke, Conor Moynagh, Dara McVeety, Cian Mackey and Michael Argue, and just this week former U21 ace Niall Murray was ruled out for the rest of the season.
Losing that calibre of player in one close season was bad enough.
What manager Mickey Graham was left with was a panel of players who were either rookies or ones who were still a couple of strength and conditioning years away from regarding themselves as fully fledged senior inter-county footballers.
No wonder Armagh ran over the top of them as easily as they did.
And yet, there they were, seven days later, playing with 14 men for 44 minutes and getting the better of Westmeath.
For obvious reasons, an intense focus has been on Division Two and Division Three this year with the relegated teams dropping into the inaugural Tier Two – unless they somehow reach a provincial final and stay in Tier One – and the two promoted sides earning the right to compete in the Sam Maguire.
They say the Allianz Leagues are better than ever now that a team's Championship status is effectively on the line.
Despite their gutsy win over Westmeath, Cavan could still find themselves in Tier Two this summer. Every match is on a knife-edge. It’s exciting. It’s intriguing. It’s also plain wrong.
The creation of Tier Two has the very real capacity to damage a lot of counties, to the point where they could be set back for several years.
The all-singing, all-dancing Tier Two that so many pundits lobbied for hasn’t even a name yet.
It’s simply Tier Two. It hasn’t even started yet and is already in need of jump leads.
For many players, Tier Two is the incentive for players to go on that holiday they promised themselves, or that summer of football in New York or Boston, or trying another sport, or applying for that job they wanted but couldn’t because of their inter-county commitments.
Speaking in today’s Irish News, Cavan boss Mickey Graham said: “If you ask any county they all want to be able to compete in the Sam Maguire.
“That’s the joy of it, no matter what division you’re playing in. That’s why every fella plays football. To take that away from them takes the glamour away.”
It’s hard enough retaining players from year to year. The GAA has just made it more difficult.
Creating Championship tiers was based on the false premise that there is no point in taking part in a competition that you have no chance of winning.
If that was the case, FIFA should create World Cup tiers and see how the lower tier gets on.
And they should tell the likes of Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Cameroon, Colombia, Australia, Peru and Iran that there’s no point in applying for Tier One because they’ve no chance of winning it.
Such a move would end international football in a heartbeat.
Some of the greatest moments in World Cup history involved some of the smaller football nations.
Peru 1978. Paraguay 1998. Republic of Ireland in 1990. Senegal 2002. Ghana 2006. Chile 2010. Colombia 2014.
These teams added just as much colour to the overall narrative than the actual winners themselves.
The GAA’s Tier Two is so badly flawed that it doesn’t matter how many reassuring text messages Declan sends John. If the format is wrong, you’ll not fool the participants or supporters.
Will ‘live’ television coverage of the Tier Two final before the All-Ireland senior final really make a difference?
Over the last number of years League football has trumped the Championship for excitement and as a spectacle.
As a consequence, the GAA decides to carry out tweaks on the Championship when the real problem is the National League structures.
That’s where the glass ceilings emerged.
But, rather than trying to do away with these glass ceilings, the GAA bolsters them for the Championship by way of tiers.
In effect, it’s raising standards in the upper tier – where they don’t particularly need raised – and eroding them in the lower tier.
Last year, Cavan reached an Ulster final. Losing to Donegal was undoubtedly a chastening experience.
Given the players they’ve lost in the close season, they are now in transition. A high amount of their players are learning as they go along.
The League used to be the place where you found your best team, you ironed out your Plan A and Plan B; it was where players got ready for the Championship stage – the premier competition in the GAA.
By the time Championship comes around Cavan, for instance, could be playing in Tier Two.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that being barred from the Sam Maguire will have a demoralising impact on a lot of counties.
In time, county boards will be tempted to cut back on senior team expenditure. They mightn’t have strength and conditioning coach on site any longer. Fewer people will see the benefit in hiring a nutritionist. Everything will be scaled back. Stats. Video analysis. Physios.
The de-investment in the shop window teams will continue. Because it’s only Tier Two.
Overall standards will inevitably slip, while Tier One will be brimming with fully-resourced juggernauts.
Meanwhile, the U20 grade – the supposed feeder team to the senior ranks – continues to be squeezed to the point where it looks pretty dysfunctional.
It begs the question: How can the National League be so great when it perpetuates the problem?
Were the All-Ireland Qualifiers and those balmy Saturday nights so wrong? Mayo-Down? Westmeath-Armagh?
And what of the old Division 1A, 1B, 2A and 2B format?
Was it so wrong that the lower-ranked counties were exposed to the leading lights in the country?
At least the old League system created a more competitive Championship.
Granted, it would take a brave GAA President to put up their hand to say the National League structures are part of the problem, and tiers aren't the answer.
