Sport

Kenny Archer: Counties must start making their minds up on future football Championship format

Kenny Archer

Kenny Archer

Kenny is the deputy sports editor and a Liverpool FC fan.

The likes of Antrim and Fermanagh could face a future occasionally outside a revamped Ulster SFC.<br /> Picture - Colm O'Reilly
The likes of Antrim and Fermanagh could face a future occasionally outside a revamped Ulster SFC.
Picture - Colm O'Reilly
The likes of Antrim and Fermanagh could face a future occasionally outside a revamped Ulster SFC.
Picture - Colm O'Reilly

And then there were eight…

And, with the exception of Donegal, an eight surely anticipated by many.

Given that a Tir Chonaill victory at Brewster Park on Sunday would have excluded Tyrone from the 'last men standing' in the senior football championship - and that Monaghan edged out Armagh in that thriller the day before - it couldn't have been all the Division One teams, either of this year or next.

So Dublin, Kerry, Mayo, Tyrone, Monaghan, Galway, Cork, and Kildare are among the dozen usual suspects to be in the Championship top eight most years in recent times.

While all those counties keep their focus on their forthcoming provincial finals, and the prospect of the All-Ireland semi-finals, the rest must think about next year - and beyond.

The time has come for those other 25 counties (26? Do Kilkenny bother thinking about inter-county football?), those no longer in this year's senior football championship, to start making their minds up about what they want the future format to be.

The Special Congress this autumn really is for the likes of them, not the aforementioned remaining eight. Realistically, the likes of Donegal, Galway, and Meath, maybe Roscommon don't have to concern themselves either.

The major impact will be on the counties which most often find themselves in Divisions Three or Four.

At last there's an increasing acceptance that further structural alterations to the football championship are required. There will always be strong and weak, with medium in-between, but inter-county football doesn't seem likely to follow the club lines of senior, intermediate, and junior, even if that would make more sense than the two tier elements being put forward.

Since the opening of 'the back door' 20 years ago and the advent of the All-Ireland qualifiers, along with death and taxes the certainties became Kerry and Dublin. Always the Kingdom in the quarter-finals, almost always the Dubs, and definitely over their dominant past decade. Mayo, Tyrone, Cork, Donegal, and Meath were regulars there too.

Although more and more counties were tiring of the qualifiers turning out to boost those 'bigger' counties, the final straw for many seems to have been the introduction in 2018 of the super elitist Super Eights, which elevated the big guns even more.

All those extra games were killed off last year and this by Covid, as were the All-Ireland qualifiers, with the pandemic also ushering in the split season between club and inter-county.

Planning ahead may be brave, even foolhardy, in the circumstances, but the hopes for some modified football Championships format, with more matches than in the enforced return to the traditional system, are what will be considered in two major proposals at the Special Congress.

Proposal 'A' simultaneously strengthens and weakens the provincial championships. It would boost the traditional competitions by sending the four winners straight into the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

Yet it would also dilute them by moving one county out of Ulster and several out of Leinster, to balance out the numbers and provide four geographical groups of eight, bulking up the participants in new-look 'Connacht' and 'Munster' competitions.

Most counties would go on to an All-Ireland series (with provincial winners heading straight to A-I quarter-finals), although the eight lowest would be in the second tier Tailteann Cup.

Persuading counties to accept the risk of being moved away from their traditional home, even temporarily, could be difficult, although many counties would feel/ know that they are highly unlikely to suffer that fate.

Yet even though Fermanagh have never won Ulster, while Antrim have now gone 70 years without lifting the Anglo-Celt, neither would be willing to give up their chance in the competition.

Cavan, only recently dethroned as Ulster champs after last year's record-extending 40th success, could even find themselves out of the province if they don't climb out of Division Four.

However, Proposal 'B' would bring far greater change, effectively establishing a National League Championship, with the provincial championships to be played off earlier in the year.

Although having four Ulster teams in Division One again next season is an enticing prospect, even the Ulster SFC would surely lose some cachet if it were to be standalone, rather than linked to the All-Ireland series.

Plenty of counties from the lower divisions of the League have emphasised the importance of that competition to them but this format would make the League element almost the be-all and end-all for many.

Only the winners of Divisions Three and Four would be involved in the All-Ireland Championship proper, and even then only in 'preliminary' All-Ireland quarter-finals (i.e. not All-Ireland quarter-finals at all) - their task to overcome the teams that finish second and third in Division Two in order to reach the last eight.

The bulk of the teams in Division Three and Four would only go into a second tier championship, the Tailteann Cup.

The feedback from the Gaelic Players Association is that a second tier would only be acceptable if it provided a few matches, not just a guaranteed minimum of one.

Neither proposal does that, but at least Proposal B offers more games which are linked to the Championship in the end. Whether that's enough to persuade enough counties to back that radical format is debatable, especially with the potential for quite a few matches to become 'dead rubbers', especially the lower down the league ladder you go.

Proposal A would have a minimum of four actual Championship games per county, with three round robin meetings in each four-team geographical/ provincial group followed by one of the following: a provincial final, an All-Ireland qualifier, or a Tailteann Cup outing.

That concept is closer to the current Championship set-up, and the other might be seen as little more than a re-branded League, with little real Championship appeal for many counties.

The next couple of months should bring debate and dilemmas for counties, weighing ambition against reality, balancing hopes against fears.