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Post by Mickmack on Oct 21, 2021 9:14:30 GMT
The Kerry delegation will wait to hear the debate in Congress on Saturday before deciding on what way they will vote. There is something very wrong with that. If the Kerry delegation dont vote for plan B we can only assume they like going into Croker for big knock out games in an 'undercooked' state
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Post by royalkerryfan on Oct 21, 2021 10:10:57 GMT
The Kerry delegation will wait to hear the debate in Congress on Saturday before deciding on what way they will vote. There is something very wrong with that. If the Kerry delegation dont vote for plan B we can only assume they like going into Croker for big knock out games in an 'undercooked' state I agree, Have Kerry officials not studied the pros and cons of this proposal before walking into congress? Have they not consulted its members? It's players? Do they really expect to be influenced by speakers from other counties? Proposal B is badly needed and Kerry will look very selfish if we don't support it.
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Post by onlykerry on Oct 21, 2021 12:11:51 GMT
The Kerry delegation will wait to hear the debate in Congress on Saturday before deciding on what way they will vote. There is something very wrong with that. Or do they hear whispers from the corridor of powers that we don't - I would hope they have a mandate in terms of how to vote and perhaps they are hoping for some last minute tweaks that the doubt about the outcome will push through. Just because they have not made a declaration of their intentions does not mean they don't have a plan - there are a lot of important details that may seep out during the debate and they are right to keep their powder dry. Plan B is not a must have slam dunk.
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Post by onlykerry on Oct 21, 2021 12:13:27 GMT
Question! If proposal B gets through does it start in 2020 0r 2023? The suggestion is it will begin in 2022 - the very next campaign.
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Post by royalkerryfan on Oct 21, 2021 12:16:52 GMT
The Kerry delegation will wait to hear the debate in Congress on Saturday before deciding on what way they will vote. There is something very wrong with that. Or do they hear whispers from the corridor of powers that we don't - I would hope they have a mandate in terms of how to vote and perhaps they are hoping for some last minute tweaks that the doubt about the outcome will push through. Just because they have not made a declaration of their intentions does not mean they don't have a plan - there are a lot of important details that may seep out during the debate and they are right to keep their powder dry. Plan B is not a must have slam dunk. I think it's arguably Congress most important decision in our lifetime. The championship in its current format is a dead duck. Proposal B is not perfect but it's s start and it's what is needed. The delegates represents us, We should have a right to know what Kerrys official position is ? Without sounding too corny the game belongs to everyone and we should be able to see what rationale our delegates are using to form their decision.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2021 12:21:03 GMT
Kerry as the premier footballing county should be expressing a view on this. It is a potentially seismic change. It smacks of weak leadership and is an insult to the players and manager in particular to not be upfront about the way they will vote.
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Post by Mickmack on Oct 22, 2021 6:58:56 GMT
Jack Anderson: We have waited 135 years for change, we can surely wait another 135 days Some acknowledge that motion 19 is flawed but that it will do for now and can be tweaked later. The GAA does not work like that
FRI, 22 OCT, 2021 - 06:00 Jack Anderson
The idea that the yearly champions of a sport should emerge from a competitive, tiered league system was last considered radical in the late 19th century. And yet on Saturday, that very idea will be central to a GAA special congress on the future of its most important competition — the men’s All-Ireland football championship
Although momentum now seems to be behind motion 19 — flipping the provincial championships to spring and having a league-based summer All-Ireland — influential elements within the GAA are “agin it”.
In one of those procedural quirks unique to the GAA, motion 19 is not the first championship motion on the agenda.
Motion 18 is an eight-team, provincial championships proposal. After a Kafkaesque repechage system based on where a county finishes in the Allianz League, teams are divided equally among the provinces.
A minor intrigue at GAA Congress tomorrow is that motion 19 will only be voted upon if motion 18 (the 4X8 proposal) fails.
There seems to be a consensus however that the only redeeming feature of motion 18 is its mathematical symmetry. If the historical fifth province (cúige) in Ireland (Greater Meath) still existed, who knows what they would have done — maybe split Dublin in four (7 X 5)?
Motion 18 is a bit like a politician moving to an adjacent constituency but originally from and still residing in another. It is a move that has never really been a vote-getter in Ireland. It is seen as slightly desperate even a tad cynical. It seems therefore that as an election candidate, motion 18 may not even get its deposit back.
While there may be emerging unity on what is not wanted (motion 18), there remains disunity on what is needed to restructure the football championship (motion 19). The Squid Game-like twist in the plot is that if neither motion 18 nor 19 succeeds, then the last man standing is the current provincial structures with qualifiers. The Super 8s are out. The Tailteann Cup — I’d prefer the O’Dwyer-Heffernan Cup — is in.
This could mean that, although a majority do not want this default option, that is what they’ll get. In trying to guess what Congress might do tomorrow — motion 18 or 19 or the motionless third option — the old racing adage applies: “in a race of three back the outsider.”
In 1999, for example, Australia had a republic referendum. A majority were in favour of removing the Queen as the Head of State but because republicans couldn’t agree on how this might be done, the referendum failed. The Queen remains, so might the provinces and the backdoor qualifiers.
Another racing adage that might be more apt is “always back the horse named self-interest”. And that brings us to the criticism of motion 19 (the summer league-championship).
The concerns that the CEOs of the various provinces have about motion 19 betray the power relations (administrative and financial) within the GAA. Let’s speak plainly here. Motion 19 will mean that the provinces, denuded of summer championships and the accompanying revenue, will become less important in the GAA’s administrative hierarchy. Provincial councils will become decentralised offices of Croke Park.
Round robin provincial championships held in spring will not hold the same appeal (for spectators, sponsors, and broadcasters alike) as those that exist currently – certainly in Ulster. For those of my generation, the Munster Senior Cup in rugby was a storied feature of the club game in the province. Of course, it still has a place, but the rise of the All-Ireland League saw it lose its lustre.
The reactions of the CEOs of Ulster (Brian McAvoy) and Leinster (Michael Reynolds — one of the most decent, hardworking GAA officials I ever came across) to motion 19 must be seen in this light. They are battling for the future of the organisations which they run.
Moreover, they have the right (as McAvoy did in an Off the Ball interview) to raise questions about why the embedded system should be replaced by one not fully costed. Members of the Calendar Task Force have manfully suggested that motion 19 could add €10m to the GAA’s coffers. GAA’s central office dispute the total and its methodology. They say that the third ‘default’ option (provinces, backdoor, and Tailteann Cup) would likely be the most effective revenue generator (as I said earlier back the outsider of three, especially if its name is self-interest).
Why is it that, even though the Calendar Task Force’s proposals have been around for months, is it only this week that we got any meaningful insight into what the GAA’s CEO’s thoughts are on all this?
Sports organisations have three ways of raising revenue — membership/gate receipts; sponsorship and broadcasting. The limited domestic market means that the second and third sources will always be relatively restricted for the GAA. Ways of showcasing your key championship at the optimal time of year in as competitive a light as possible surely merited a more forceful contribution from the GAA’s CEO, especially one who was the former finance director.
This week’s press conference by Tom Ryan favouring motion 19 was not exactly an “it was The Sun wot won it” moment, though his assurance that provincial councils will not be left out of pocket by a league-based championship was telling.
But to get a motion across the line at Congress requires more than a press conference. Anyone acquainted with the GAA knows that most of the dealing goes on beforehand. In the GAA, the on-track SP is irrelevant; business is done ante-post.
One thing to watch out for tomorrow from the top table – Paraic Duffy was a master at it – is who speaks on a motion and in what order. Wait to see if one of the traditional hurling counties contributes. If a hurling county speaks in favour of a football motion, the subtext is: “listen lads usually we don’t care what ye do but even we think this is a good idea”.
Personally, it is hard to see how the provincial system can continue. Between them, Kerry and Cork have won the Munster football championship more times than Rangers and Celtic have won in Scotland. And even that is false because the last time Waterford or Limerick won one, the Wright Brothers had yet to fly.
Equally though, the problem with motion 19 is that it is predicated on the principle that everyone must have a chance to compete in the Sam Maguire.
In adhering to that principle, motion 19 means that the sixth best team in the country is out of the championship after the league, but those ranked 17th and 25th remain. If the same system had been used in the 32 team FIFA World Cup of 2018, then, after the group stages, France (who won it) would have been eliminated and Germany (who won one game) would have progressed.
The principle of “one in, all in” to the Sam Maguire is also at odds with what takes place in virtually every other facet of GAA life. Inter-county hurling has five tiers. Ladies football and camogie have thriving, differing grades. Indeed, after the vote on Saturday, many delegates will attend weekend matches involving their own clubs in junior, intermediate or senior championships with promotion and relegation.
If a county board at its AGM this year raised the idea that from now on every junior club must compete in an all-county senior championship, it would be struck down as fanciful and self-defeating.
Some acknowledge that motion 19 is flawed but that it will do for now and can be tweaked later. The GAA does not work like that. The introduction of the offensive mark in Gaelic football was the wrong answer to a question that no one asked and yet we are stuck with it.
If a rule that misunderstands both Gaelic Games and Aussie Rules can survive, so might a flawed championship motion.
A time-limited experiment with motion 19, suggested by former President John Horan, seems sensible. Or why not, informed by the current debate, remit the matter to the Calendar Task Force (a highly talented grouping) for them to reflect and readjust to the (we hope) post-Covid GAA world of a split club/inter-county season. We have waited 135 years for change, we can surely wait another 135 days or so.
Ultimately, a century and a half of history is at the heart of all of this. The first football final was played in 1888 between Limerick and Louth. When will a men’s senior football All-Ireland final, featuring such counties, happen again?
- Jack Anderson, Professor of Sports Law, Melbourne
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kerryexile
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Post by kerryexile on Oct 22, 2021 8:26:57 GMT
I don’t have a lot of interest in the administration of the GAA. My interest is purely what happens when two teams cross the white lines to do battle.
But the amount of analysis, from all quarters, pundits, journalists, players, managers that has gone on regarding the bottle of smoke that may or may not be opened at the conference tomorrow is unbelievable.
It has all been prompted by a heavy defeat inflicted on Leitrim, by Mayo earlier this year. Yet there is nothing, absolutely nothing, on the agenda tomorrow, Option A, Option B or no change, to prevent the same thing happening again in one year, five years or ten years. What they are trying to do is, that when it happens again, poor shattered Leitrim will have a couple of consolation games against the likes of Fermanagh and Longford before they hang up their boots for the year. Let the children play amongst themselves while the adults focus on the real business.
The authorities know that this is a complete charade and have proven it to themselves and everyone else that there is right way to help Leitrim. Years back when it was considered that football was getting weak in Dublin they decided to take decisive fool proof action, they gave Dublin huge sums of money. Of course it worked. It brought success and Dublin reached the point where they are attracting their own outside money.
If the conference was about redistributing the financial resources of the GAA and a plan was adopted, then Leitrim could reach the point where doctors and internationally travelled business men would have to leave their football panel because their academic careers required them to go to work every day. Then they definitely would have a realistic chance against Mayo.
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Post by Mickmack on Oct 22, 2021 9:37:12 GMT
Under plan B Leitrim will still have the opportunity to be hammered by Mayo in the Connacht championship but they will get over that.
They will then get to play competitive games against teams in their own Division.
If they dont win the group they will play in the Tailteann cup against other teams of broadly similar status.
If they climb the divisions to reach the top 6 in Division one, they will have a pop at the Sam Maguire.
Surely thats an improvement in Leitrims lot.
Of course funding needs to be distributed better but Leitrim have 25000 people so there is always going to be a ceiling on what can be achieved but the main thing is that they get meaningful games and can aspire to improve.
The Leitrim hurlers get meaningful games. Why not do the same for the footballers
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Jo90
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Post by Jo90 on Oct 22, 2021 10:00:05 GMT
If this system was in place in 2014, Kerry would have left the 'championship' after the first phase!
I like proposal B, but I'd add more teams from Div 1 to the preliminary round. E.g. 12 teams instead of 10, with top 4 in Div 1 into the 1/4s, and the preliminary round being 5th, 6th and 7th in Div 1, Top 3 in Div 2 and Div 3 and 4 winners.
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keane
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Post by keane on Oct 22, 2021 10:24:08 GMT
Honestly this Plan B is about the worst system you could propose that could plausibly make it through congress. It's the absolute pits. The idea that you would tweak it to get something decent down the line is a cod - you wouldn't need a tweak you would need to throw the whole thing out and start again, and realistically the prospect of that is nil if this is voted through.
I'd much prefer we limp along another couple of years with the current terrible system than commit to a different terrible system for an extended period.
The appetite for wholesale change is now undeniable even to the galaxy brains in Croke Park. With any luck these two useless proposals will be turned down and they will come back the following year or the year after with the Sean Kelly/Jim McGuinness system and we will never need to talk about it again.
Anyway, it's all deckchairs on the titanic unless and until there is a sincere and almighty effort to address the financial, structural and coaching imbalances between Dublin, the strongest others and the rest.
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Post by Mickmack on Oct 22, 2021 10:43:34 GMT
Anyway, it's all deckchairs on the titanic unless and until there is a sincere and almighty effort to address the financial, structural and coaching imbalances between Dublin, the strongest others and the rest. No sign of that ever happening
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keane
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Post by keane on Oct 22, 2021 11:09:49 GMT
Anyway, it's all deckchairs on the titanic unless and until there is a sincere and almighty effort to address the financial, structural and coaching imbalances between Dublin, the strongest others and the rest. No sign of that ever happening Absolutely none at the moment, indeed.
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kerryexile
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Post by kerryexile on Oct 22, 2021 11:41:56 GMT
Under plan B Leitrim will still have the opportunity to be hammered by Mayo in the Connacht championship but they will get over that. They will then get to play competitive games against teams in their own Division. If they dont win the group they will play in the Tailteann cup against other teams of broadly similar status. If they climb the divisions to reach the top 6 in Division one, they will have a pop at the Sam Maguire. Surely thats an improvement in Leitrims lot. Of course funding needs to be distributed better but Leitrim have 25000 people so there is always going to be a ceiling on what can be achieved but the main thing is that they get meaningful games and can aspire to improve. The Leitrim hurlers get meaningful games. Why not do the same for the footballers Problem: Leitrim and several other counties slipping away behind the top counties Action: Take steps so that Leitrim et al can proportionately improve so that gap is not increasing Result after Action: Nothing done to improve Leitrim situation, A few extra games to take their mind off of bad defeat Conclusion: Action was a complete waste of time. You say that if they climb to the top six in Division 1.... that's an improvement. There is absolutely nothing, zilch, nada, on the agenda that will help Leitrim do this. I don't want to reopen the debate about finance but ponder one question Why didn't the authorities tinker with the championship structure to improve the Dublin situation. Answer: Because they wanted action that would bring results. That is history now but with a similar problem in other counties why ignore the solution that previously worked and go through a meaningless charade that is totally futile. I know that resources are not limitless but it is the lever that brings a response and resources can be proportionately distributed. (Proportionately = as required for football purposes, not population). And that completes my contribution to this thread.
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Post by thehermit on Oct 22, 2021 14:13:09 GMT
Anyway, it's all deckchairs on the titanic unless and until there is a sincere and almighty effort to address the financial, structural and coaching imbalances between Dublin, the strongest others and the rest. No sign of that ever happening For me Dublin and the massive financial/grant/funding/sponsorship imbalances between it and all their rivals is the biggest issue in the GAA today.
Championship structure reform cannot work unless the Association are first willing to give every county their fair share and in cases of serious under funding - directly intervene in those counties and give them everything they can to help them maximise their potential.
The fact they were only willing to do it in Dublin (because Dublin' demographic is so big that success/dominance would inevitably repay the investment in kind) is a mindset so against the fabric of what the GAA was founded and meant to stand for that its almost impossible to believe its been allowed go on for so long already.
The only journalist I've seen even reference this point is Michael Verney. Without taking the success of the Dublin model and applying local adaptions of it everywhere else all we are doing is ensuring Dublin win, win and win 8 or 9 out of every 10 All Irelands in perpetuity.
A League Championship will not stop their dominance, in fact its tailor made for the massive squad and backroom team they can sustain.
Leitrim or their like might see a special generation come along and might be able to rise up the ranks to get into the last 8 under this system but then they and everyone else will meet the dark blue bankrolled brick wall.
Can any national sporting competition, especially an amateur one, sustain itself long term if an alternative winner might only manage to appear once a decade?
The nightmare I've long feared is an All Ireland (in whatever format) every bit as predictable and irrelevant as Leinster. The past decade has proven we are well on our way to that.
So for me the whole Proposal B stuff is red herring stuff to give Croke Park another few years of a breathing space over the Dublin thing. Maybe the worst thing that ever happened was Dublin actually losing this summer in that freak game. Its just bought the GAA more time to let the farce continue.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2021 14:20:29 GMT
No sign of that ever happening For me Dublin and the massive financial/grant/funding/sponsorship imbalances between it and all their rivals is the biggest issue in the GAA today.
Championship structure reform cannot work unless the Association are first willing to give every county their fair share and in cases of serious under funding - directly intervene in those counties and give them everything they can to help them maximise their potential.
The fact they were only willing to do it in Dublin (because Dublin' demographic is so big that success/dominance would inevitably repay the investment in kind) is a mindset so against the fabric of what the GAA was founded and meant to stand for that its almost impossible to believe its been allowed go on for so long already.
The only journalist I've seen even reference this point is Michael Verney. Without taking the success of the Dublin model and applying local adaptions of it everywhere else all we are doing is ensuring Dublin win, win and win 8 or 9 out of every 10 All Irelands in perpetuity.
A League Championship will not stop their dominance, in fact its tailor made for the massive squad and backroom team they can sustain.
Leitrim or their like might see a special generation come along and might be able to rise up the ranks to get into the last 8 under this system but then they and everyone else will meet the dark blue bankrolled brick wall.
Can any national sporting competition, especially an amateur one, sustain itself long term if an alternative winner might only manage to appear once a decade?
The nightmare I've long feared is an All Ireland (in whatever format) every bit as predictable and irrelevant as Leinster. The past decade has proven we are well on our way to that.
So for me the whole Proposal B stuff is red herring stuff to give Croke Park another few years of a breathing space over the Dublin thing. Maybe the worst thing that ever happened was Dublin actually losing this summer in that freak game. Its just bought the GAA more time to let the farce continue. the new system gaurentees dublin between 6-7 home games every year whereas the rest of the teams only get 3-4 games at home, that's not fair in my book
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Post by royalkerryfan on Oct 22, 2021 14:53:49 GMT
Lads talking about Dublin and finances etc that's fine lads but that's a different argument.
Regardless of what structures are in place the same 4 or so teams will win Sam that's it.
The point is the championship as it stands is not fit for purpose.
Every county has a championship based on ability except the inter County championship which is madness.
Nobody wants to see Kerry v Clare anymore it's meaningless.
Kerry v Dublin in July is what we all should want.
Yes it makes winning Sam harder but it's for the betterment of the game.
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keane
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Post by keane on Oct 22, 2021 16:48:15 GMT
Lads talking about Dublin and finances etc that's fine lads but that's a different argument. Regardless of what structures are in place the same 4 or so teams will win Sam that's it.
The point is the championship as it stands is not fit for purpose. Every county has a championship based on ability except the inter County championship which is madness. Nobody wants to see Kerry v Clare anymore it's meaningless. Kerry v Dublin in July is what we all should want. Yes it makes winning Sam harder but it's for the betterment of the game. Which four?
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Post by thehermit on Oct 22, 2021 18:06:20 GMT
Well all eyes on Congress tomorrow whatever happens, it looks like it will be a close run thing.
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Post by royalkerryfan on Oct 22, 2021 18:21:57 GMT
Lads talking about Dublin and finances etc that's fine lads but that's a different argument. Regardless of what structures are in place the same 4 or so teams will win Sam that's it.
The point is the championship as it stands is not fit for purpose. Every county has a championship based on ability except the inter County championship which is madness. Nobody wants to see Kerry v Clare anymore it's meaningless. Kerry v Dublin in July is what we all should want. Yes it makes winning Sam harder but it's for the betterment of the game. Which four? It's a general point the same teams will win regardless of the format.
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Post by Mickmack on Oct 22, 2021 18:57:02 GMT
No sign of that ever happening For me Dublin and the massive financial/grant/funding/sponsorship imbalances between it and all their rivals is the biggest issue in the GAA today. Championship structure reform cannot work unless the Association are first willing to give every county their fair share and in cases of serious under funding - directly intervene in those counties and give them everything they can to help them maximise their potential.
The fact they were only willing to do it in Dublin (because Dublin' demographic is so big that success/dominance would inevitably repay the investment in kind) is a mindset so against the fabric of what the GAA was founded and meant to stand for that its almost impossible to believe its been allowed go on for so long already.
The only journalist I've seen even reference this point is Michael Verney. Without taking the success of the Dublin model and applying local adaptions of it everywhere else all we are doing is ensuring Dublin win, win and win 8 or 9 out of every 10 All Irelands in perpetuity. A League Championship will not stop their dominance, in fact its tailor made for the massive squad and backroom team they can sustain.
Leitrim or their like might see a special generation come along and might be able to rise up the ranks to get into the last 8 under this system but then they and everyone else will meet the dark blue bankrolled brick wall. Can any national sporting competition, especially an amateur one, sustain itself long term if an alternative winner might only manage to appear once a decade?
The nightmare I've long feared is an All Ireland (in whatever format) every bit as predictable and irrelevant as Leinster. The past decade has proven we are well on our way to that. So for me the whole Proposal B stuff is red herring stuff to give Croke Park another few years of a breathing space over the Dublin thing. Maybe the worst thing that ever happened was Dublin actually losing this summer in that freak game. Its just bought the GAA more time to let the farce continue.
I agree 100% with your post apart from the final two lines. I actually think the GAA would like to see Dublin winning ten in row which would make the process of splitting Dublin a no brainer. I think splitting Dublin is their real agenda. Mayo threw a bit of a spanner into the works in extra time in 2021 but Dublin are not going to slip to be like KK in hurling.
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keane
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Post by keane on Oct 22, 2021 19:25:28 GMT
It's a general point the same teams will win regardless of the format. It's important though. One of the teams presumably is Dublin, all of a sudden guaranteed to win every second All Ireland after winning two in about 35 years up to 2011 because the GAA decided to stop them making a balls of themselves, put structures in place and give them money. Current All Ireland champions Tyrone with an ancient 18 year history of winning All Irelands. Who else? Mayo haven't won a Championship in 70 years. Donegal, two in 130 years. Donegal - half a stag party and half a football team - ended up in All Ireland's in 2012 & 2014 by adding a bit of structure and some money, only they did it thanks to the McEniffs without anyone in the GAA giving a toss about them. Look at the report that just came out about the absolute shambles Clare GAA is and consider what a few lone enthusiasts like Colm Collins have managed to achieve as a second sport in a sparsely populated county on the edge of the world with absolutely no help from either within or without. Think of the money and admin energy that was spent to change Dublin from occasional Leinster winners to most dominant force in the history of the GAA in ten years and then ask yourself if you really believe that it wouldn't be possible to turn a Cork or Galway into a Tyrone? Could you make a Monaghan out of a Fermanagh? You'd nearly do it by accident if you started handing out €50s at random on the streets of Enniskillen. Anyway this is all tangential to the discussion of this absolutely septic Championship proposal but this idea that there is some top four in football who always win, always have won and always will win is just a total nonsense that I see more and more people deluding themselves with in the last couple of years. But yeah, if you want to help the weaker teams give them money, coaches and administrative expertise. We know this works, we see it happen all the time. Changing from one crap competition structure to another won't do anything.
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Post by royalkerryfan on Oct 22, 2021 20:39:36 GMT
It's a general point the same teams will win regardless of the format. It's important though. One of the teams presumably is Dublin, all of a sudden guaranteed to win every second All Ireland after winning two in about 35 years up to 2011 because the GAA decided to stop them making a balls of themselves, put structures in place and give them money. Current All Ireland champions Tyrone with an ancient 18 year history of winning All Irelands. Who else? Mayo haven't won a Championship in 70 years. Donegal, two in 130 years. Donegal - half a stag party and half a football team - ended up in All Ireland's in 2012 & 2014 by adding a bit of structure and some money, only they did it thanks to the McEniffs without anyone in the GAA giving a toss about them. Look at the report that just came out about the absolute shambles Clare GAA is and consider what a few lone enthusiasts like Colm Collins have managed to achieve as a second sport in a sparsely populated county on the edge of the world with absolutely no help from either within or without. Think of the money and admin energy that was spent to change Dublin from occasional Leinster winners to most dominant force in the history of the GAA in ten years and then ask yourself if you really believe that it wouldn't be possible to turn a Cork or Galway into a Tyrone? Could you make a Monaghan out of a Fermanagh? You'd nearly do it by accident if you started handing out €50s at random on the streets of Enniskillen. Anyway this is all tangential to the discussion of this absolutely septic Championship proposal but this idea that there is some top four in football who always win, always have won and always will win is just a total nonsense that I see more and more people deluding themselves with in the last couple of years. But yeah, if you want to help the weaker teams give them money, coaches and administrative expertise. We know this works, we see it happen all the time. Changing from one crap competition structure to another won't do anything. What do you not like about proposal B ?
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Post by Mickmack on Oct 23, 2021 8:26:35 GMT
I dont know why some people so concerned with Dublin especially with proposol B.Under this proposal Dublin along with kerry will have 7 championshio games to progress and 3 or 4 of them might be away.the problem I have is a division 3 team can qualify for the quarter finals before the team 6th in division 1.however the system would bring great excitement to the league/championship basis but it still leaves a weaker team open to a bad beating in a quarter final.I think Kerry Cb are very cautious about B and im not sure the proposal will go ahead. If all division 1 teams were guaranteed to quality, the league games would have no edge to them. The games would be like tjose games for opening a new pitch. A division 3 team can aspire to playing one of the big teams....shur isnt that a good thing even if they may lose heavily....
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Post by Mickmack on Oct 23, 2021 9:01:22 GMT
Keith Duggan
Somewhere in the Billy Connolly comedy archives is a sketch where he claims that Mexican food is always the same dish, just folded differently. “That’s a burrito!” scolds the customer. “I ordered enchiladas! “Oh, so sorry sir,” says Connolly’s imagined waiter, leaning over and arranging the dish into a new presentation.
Something similar will happen at the GAA’s special congress today, when 183 delegates vote on whether they should change the venerable All-Ireland senior football championship into a burrito or an enchilada.
The original All-Ireland championship was drafted in simpler times and along the attractively clean provincial system, with the four best teams emerging from Ireland’s four green fields to duke it out in epic All-Ireland semi-finals and a final, to which people would cycle for days and sleep in barns in order to witness. Good times!
But it became clear, over the course of the 20th century, that certain counties were hogging the provincial silverware. We all know who they are. And that other counties – smaller, less-populous and less boastful, sometimes thoughtlessly referred to as “the weaker counties” as though they were wilfully puny of bicep and frail of breath – could not get a look in.
That is why landmark wins – Clare in 1992, Leitrim in 1994 – were regarded as minor miracles. They were a departure from the usual.
The recognition that the overall championship needs to evolve into something more inclusive is a good thing. The GAA has come up with two proposals, and it has become obvious that it’s the second one, named Proposal B, that has caught the eye. If passed it will do what it says on the tin by providing the nation with a new-look All-Ireland championship. There is just one flaw in the plan.
Absurd It is completely bonkers. It is absurd in the extreme, arguably the worst collective idea since the governmental tax on children’s shoes in the early 1980s.
The first thing it will achieve is an instant end to the significance of the provincial championships which will, with a shake of the congressional wand, be reduced to pre-season warm-up competitions.
Where teams could once play for five significant cups (the four provincial cups and the All-Ireland), they now play for just one, the Sam Maguire. In other words, Proposal B will transform the All-Ireland into a contest in which almost no county will win anything, ever, again.
Think of all the hardcore, serious football county teams out there. Armagh have won a lone All-Ireland title in their history. Galway have won two titles, in close succession, since 1966. Outside Dublin and Kerry, the Sam Maguire has proven notoriously difficult to get hold of – which is why it is treated as sacred.
The second glaring problem is that the new proposal predicates All-Ireland participation on league performance. For decades the league was treated as a kind of mechanics workshop in which counties built a racecar fit for the summer. Now it is the route to qualification.
The bizarre outcome here is that the three lowest-placed teams in division one will be EXCLUDED from the All-Ireland championship on a given year. So, the reward for playing in the highest division, against the best teams and then failing to finish in the top five is that three teams from the top eight miss out each year.
On league results of the last few years then counties like Tyrone, Galway, Donegal, Monaghan and Mayo will inevitably miss out on an All-Ireland season very soon. What purpose does that serve? How does that improve the competition?
One-sided games Somewhere behind the dismayingly muddled thinking exists an egalitarian impulse and a genuine desire to allow more counties to flourish. But because the structure has been forcibly manipulated to guarantee three teams from the second, third or fourth divisions a passage to the All-Ireland quarter-finals, where they will play against division one sides, this will inevitably result in a series of one-sided games just when the contest should be peaking.
In other words, with one stroke the GAA will have managed to reduce the significance of the All-Ireland championship – conceived as a big nationwide Fossett’s circus of a tournament – into three meaningful games.
The it’s-not-perfect-but-it’s-a-solution argument doesn’t hold water. Superior alternatives have been in circulation for a long time.
In 2015, for instance, former Donegal manager Jim McGuinness drafted on these pages a new championship system which punished no county. That system, like Proposal B, rewards league performance, with the top 16 teams playing in the All-Ireland championship. But it also rewards the provincial championships, with four places reserved for the winners of those contests.
Crucially, it also outlined the development of a second All-Ireland championship tournament for the lower-placed 16 teams – to be televised and promoted as seriously as the Sam Maguire tournament.
It stipulated that games from both championships feature on double bills throughout, including an All-Ireland Day, in which both finals would take place in Croke Park.
Fewer tickets That would, of course, mean fewer tickets for supporters from counties in the Sam Maguire game as four different counties would be represented. But it would be fair and democratic – and it would give new counties a taste of real glory and tradition. It would have been change with purpose.
This new proposal fails on that front. It’s a dismaying fudge: change for the sake of change. The outcome will remain the same. It will advance the cause of no county and improve nothing.
It will be as big a disaster as the ill-devised and instantly forgotten “Super 8s” brainwave of a few seasons ago. Only the counties can save themselves now –and they probably won’t.
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Post by Mickmack on Oct 23, 2021 9:04:21 GMT
Malachi Clerkin
Nature has healed. Don’t mind all the yakadoodling about nightclubs and live gigs and all that carry-on. The GAA has a Special Congress today and there will be real, actual, live people at it. No Zoom, no streaming, no fiddling around with dodgy connections. Just 183 delegates in a room plus a few handlers, press and sundry hangers-on.
Given that the vote on championship structures looks to have tightened through the week, the actual corporeal presence of the delegates may not be insignificant. Half the fun - for want of a better phrase - of Congress is the arm-twisting that goes on ahead of a major vote. Many’s the mind was made up down the years over a pint in the corner of a hotel bar late on a Friday night.
“You’d see it especially when there’s the election of a president at stake,” says one current county chairman. “There’d be a lot of positioning going on, not just for the election that is at hand but for the next one down the road as well. The next lad would be manoeuvring himself into position and you would see plenty of promises being made about getting on this committee or that one.
“It’s one of the big problems with the GAA, in all honesty. There’s a layer of guys who are too old and disconnected. They’re more interested in their political career and more concerned about getting themselves into position. The wheeling and dealing that goes on feeds into it all.”
The reason any of this matters at all is that by nightfall, the football championship may or may not have undergone only its third fundamental overhaul in 135 years. The people charged with either bringing about this change or hedging their bets and pushing it into next year head to Croke Park with a month’s politicking already under their belt. Most votes at Congress, special or otherwise, are forgotten before teatime. This is one of those that has the potential to echo down the decades.
Most people know the drill by now. Two options sit on the clár, devised by a group called the Fixtures Calendar Taskforce in the autumn of 2019. The first has no hope of being passed and looks likely to be withdrawn. The second has the backing of the association’s president, its director general, the GPA and some - but by no means all - counties. The motion needs 60 per cent of the vote to pass and the big unknowns going into the weekend are where the overseas votes will go.
Crucial problem At any rate, the one thing everyone appears to agree on is the need for change. Championship structures are at once the most nauseatingly dull subject in all of GAA discussion and also a perennially crucial problem in need of a fix. Nothing encapsulates this better than the fact that even those voting against change this weekend wouldn’t dream of defending the status quo.
Nobody wants what they currently have yet it’s entirely possible that they will continue with it, simply because they can’t get agreement on doing something different. This is a very GAA way of doing things. There is every chance, in fact, that they knock it back this time around before adopting it wholesale at a later date. This is also a very GAA way of doing things.
We’re not that far removed, after all, from the 2016 Congress where a motion to move the All-Ireland hurling final to August and the football final to the first week of September was defeated, only for the self-same motion to be passed the following year. And within three years of that, it became a slam dunk no-brainer that the All-Irelands would all be done by the end of July. GAA change tends to follow Hemmingway’s line about how you go bankrupt. Gradually, then all at once.
So we can be certain on some level that the football championship will have a Dermot Bannon-style transformation wrought upon it at some stage in the not-too distant future. The conversations around it in the past few weeks have been interesting, not so much for what they’ve included but more for what they’ve left out. As has been said, everyone seems to agree on the need for change. But nailing down the exact reasons why has been a slippier thing.
Partly, it’s boredom. The All-Ireland final has been competed in by only five different counties in the past decade. The same four counties have filled the semi-final spots in five of the last nine seasons. The championship has never funnelled this small a coterie of teams into its business end for such a sustained period of time. The mood for change is driven, therefore, by a sense that something else must be provided for everybody else. Which is fair enough. Laudable, in fact.
But those of us who argue for change can’t be coy about it either. Part of the drive for change is a desire to see the best teams playing against each other more often at the business end of the season. We look at the hurling championship with its rip-roaring provincial round-robins and we think life would be good if football had some of that.
Increasingly though, it has felt like we are having the wrong conversation. The hurling championship works because when it comes right down to it, hurling people have always been happy to silo off the best counties and let them fight for Liam MacCarthy amongst themselves. The distance back to the other counties is unbridgeable but beyond a tiny knuckle of hurling folk labouring in saltmines around the place, not enough people care that this is the case.
Unprecedented distance So the comparison with football falls down because the current distance between the top counties and the rest hasn’t historically been as huge as it is right now. You can be in your 20s and still remember a time when Dublin went seven years without even winning a Leinster championship. A couple of the Down players who got completely annihilated by a half-paced Donegal this summer have played in more All-Ireland finals than most of the team that beat them.
Football is used to teams bubbling up and falling away. Yet we’re living in a period of unprecedented distance. Not just between the top and the bottom but between the top and the next-to-the-top. The idea that changing the championship structures is going to fix this is a nice one. But it seems a bit simplistic. A bit cross-your-fingers and hope that everyone enjoys the big games enough not to notice it hasn’t changed things.
Notably absent from all the conversations around this Special Congress has been any real interrogation of why this distance between the top and the rest exists. It does seem like an opportunity missed, for example, that in the move to a league-based championship, no move was made to change back to the old 1A/1B and 2A/2B model.
This would have eight teams in 1A, made up of four each from Division One and Two. Ditto the eight in 1B, and so on down the line. At a stroke, the inbuilt advantage the dominant counties have each year is diminished.
Dublin, Kerry, Mayo and Tyrone improve every year at least in part because they play each other every year. It only stands to reason that over time, the same ought to be true of the likes of Kildare, Roscommon, Cork, Meath, Clare and the rest of that middle tier. That’s how it was up until 2007 when they changed to a straight four-tier league. And look what has happened since.
It is screamingly obvious that the hothousing of the Division One teams in the same pool over the past 15 years has strengthened them and weakened everyone else. If one of the reasons behind the move to a league-based championship is an attempt to restore competitive balance - and the taskforce’s report specifically cites that as one of its aims - then surely this was a simple way of making a start.
The other great unmentionable, of course, is money. Arguably no factor looms as large over the imbalance in the football championship as the finance that goes into the preparation of teams and yet it didn’t play the slightest part anywhere in the restructuring debate. This despite the fact that if it passes, the new format will automatically make the top counties far more attractive to sponsors by dint of the simple fact that they will be playing each other in massive games in the summer.
Just this week, Dublin launched a new second jersey. The same Dublin who already sell, according to a 2016 report, 20 per cent of all GAA jerseys in the country annually - somewhere in the region of 30,000 of them. The same Dublin who already sell around 100,000 pieces of kit - jackets, hoodies, gilets, etc - every year. In general, it is O’Neill’s who make the bulk of the money from jersey sales but it goes without saying that Dublin are far better positioned to make commercially attractive deals in this space than anyone else.
Pooled sponsorship Dublin’s advantage in this regard is baked in because population, support base, history, yadda, yadda, yadda. Yet everyone accepts the fact that they have it, just as Mayo and Kerry do to a lesser extent, and so on, all the way down. The idea of pooled sponsorship gets mentioned in dispatches from time to time but never altogether seriously. Yet in terms of contribution to competitive imbalance, it surely has at least as serious an effect as the championship format.
“They have to listen to the players on this one,” says the county chairman quoted at the top of the piece. “We sat down with our players last week and they’re totally in favour of changing it. I don’t get the feeling that it’s the preferred policy of the powers that be but the players want this. They want to have something to play for. This isn’t the icing on the cake but it’s better than what’s there.”
All of which is undoubtedly the case. A league-based championship will be a lot of fun. A properly-treated Tailteann Cup - with an All Stars scheme and a team holiday and, crucially, the same billing as the All-Ireland final - has a good chance of working too. But through it all, the original sin of an imbalanced funding model will still be there.
The structural problems in football go deeper than the tournament format. Until there’s a special congress addressing that, everything else feels like tinkering around the edges.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2021 9:23:48 GMT
I dont know why some people so concerned with Dublin especially with proposol B.Under this proposal Dublin along with kerry will have 7 championshio games to progress and 3 or 4 of them might be away.the problem I have is a division 3 team can qualify for the quarter finals before the team 6th in division 1.however the system would bring great excitement to the league/championship basis but it still leaves a weaker team open to a bad beating in a quarter final.I think Kerry Cb are very cautious about B and im not sure the proposal will go ahead. 1 of the problems I have with it mick is it doesn't deal with dublin 6/7 games at home whereas the rest of the teams will have only 3/4 games at home, It looks like no matter what happens in the gaa the dubs come out on top. 1 thing that could go a little way to evening things is if dublin had to play their quarter final outside of Croke Park, but then again this should have been sorted before the vote, as I said elsewhere you don't accept a job and then negotiate the wages, you negotiate the wages and then accept the job.
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Post by yellowbelly on Oct 23, 2021 11:46:57 GMT
Kerry's Tim Murphy: 'To me it's a really strong motion and something we should consider.' Says he gets sense that everybody is in favour of change, but would urge that it be reconsidered - suggests a 'roadshow' around the country to get views, vote in Feb. #GAA #SpecialCongress
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Oct 23, 2021 12:24:15 GMT
For shame.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 23, 2021 12:29:23 GMT
Unsurprising to see the lack of leadership from our county board. At least other counties expressed a view.
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