DOWN forward Conor Maginn says the proposed knockout format for the All-Ireland Championship would “open things up” and he’d always fancy the Mournemen’s chances in a winner-takes-all shoot-out.
“I think a knockout Championship is a brilliant solution to the issues,” he said.
“It will bring a lot of excitement and interest and I would see it as a fairly-strong replacement for the season. It probably opens things up a bit with the straight knockout, so it’ll be an interesting time.
“There’s no way back for any team that is knocked out so it has to add a bit of excitement because everything boiling down to one big day maybe has a bit more meaning.
“I’m always confident in the team that we have and the squad of players that we have and our management. I think we’ll be strong opposition for anybody.”
But before a ball is kicked in the Championship, Bryansford clubman Maginn says that the National Leagues need to be finished and that’s no surprise because Down stand to lose out massively if they aren’t.
Five games into their Division Three campaign, there was a feeling that Paddy Tally’s men had done the hard part. They were second in the table behind Cork and needed ‘only’ to finish off their good work against the bottom two sides - Leitrim (home) and Louth (away) – to clinch promotion and with it the guarantee of Tier One Championship football.
“We would see it as important that the season gets finished out,” said Maginn.
“There are only two games to go so the priority for us will be getting the League finished out and trying to push on for promotion.
“It’s massive for Down football to progress. Jumping back up to Division Two is very important and it will have a big impact on us next year in terms of the level of competition we’re playing at aside from the knock-on effect of what happens come Championship time.”
He added: “And we were looking forward to the last two games (in the League). We felt we were part of the way towards doing what we’d set out to do at the start of the year and we’d only two games to go to finish it off and do the job.
“Promotion was the target from the start of the year and we wanted to get that done and then move on to Championship.”
Maginn is back in training with his club Bryansford. Currently, the players are restricted to working in ‘pods’ of six and Maginn is looking forward to June 29 when he’ll be able getting out on the pitch and “get a bit of kicking done”.
Club football action in Down begins on July 31 with the leagues will be split into two sections of five teams and three rounds in seven days before the senior championship begins on the weekend of August 17 through to the final on September 20.
“It’ll all come around pretty quick and the next thing we’ll be playing club championship so getting back running and getting the injury-prevention and getting people in match-shape as quickly as possible is going to be very important,” said Maginn.
“The fixture schedule the county board have come up with works well I think. Obviously it’s not ideal but everybody is trying to do their best to work around the tough situation that we’ve been put in but I think the GAA in general has managed it well, there has been good communication and I know, from our club’s point of view, we just can’t wait to get cracking with the season.”
