Key GAA official doubts football round-robin feasible

A key Croke Park official has expressed reservations about the proposal circulated at Leinster Council that the senior provincial championship should be partly played on a round-robin basis. The matter is due for discussion at October's meeting of the provincial council.

Feargal McGill, the GAA’s head of games administration and player welfare, said whereas it was obviously a matter for the province, the association nationally has been moving away from adding to the burden of inter-county schedules.

“In broad terms the association has not been encouraging round-robin formats, particularly in football. There haven’t been the same concerns in hurling because there are fewer counties involved at senior championship level.

“Across a range of discussion groups in recent years the priority has been to ease the pressure on clubs and club players. Unfortunately club activities and county activities are opposites and we can’t expand one without reducing the other.”

Preliminary

Leinster counties Carlow, Longford, Wexford and Wicklow took part in a preliminary round-robin championship 14 years ago. Wexford won the right to compete in the provincial quarter-finals, where they lost to Dublin.

The All-Ireland qualifier system was introduced the following year and the format was deemed unsuitable in light of the expanded fixtures schedule.

Should the Leinster counties proceed with the proposal, a change to Rule 6.27 A (1) of the Official Guide would be necessary and that would require a motion to annual congress.

McGill also defended the black car sanction from charges of inconsistency, arising from recent matches in the All-Ireland football championship.

Incidents over the past two weekends at Croke Park have attracted comment with just one black card being shown and a couple of other incidents which looked to involve similar infractions going unpunished – specifically Dublin's Eoghan O'Gara, who was yellow-carded after blocking an opponent, and Mayo's Lee Keegan the week before for pulling down Cork's Paul Kerrigan after which no action was taken.

“There is always a concern in the GAA about consistency and how infractions are policed and no-one in Croke Park or in the Football Development Committee expected for a minute that we could flick a switch get everyone singing off the same hymn sheet.

“You’re trying to change an on-field culture and that was never going to happen overnight. Will we be reviewing it at the end of the season? Of course. Will we be considering getting rid of the black card? No.

“This has to be given time to find its feet. Since the rule was brought in at the start of the year our top referees have had little enough opportunity to work with it. Between league and championship some of our A-listers would only have done five or six games, so there was never any question of expecting them to be spot on in everything in the first year.

Scrutiny

“There is a greater level of scrutiny of the black cards for obvious reasons but I don’t think that levels of inconsistency have been an awful lot worse than in the case of yellow and red cards. Our intention is to get consistency rates to the highest possible level but we won’t ever get to 100 per cent, even if that’s the goal.”

Finally the Armagh county board has confirmed the resignation of football manager Paul Grimley, who stepped down in the wake of Saturday's All-Ireland quarter-final defeat by Donegal, and thanked him for his two years' service.

“Paul strenuously argued that it was the right thing to do,” ran the statement on the county website, “as he had stressed on his appointment two years ago that he would embark on a development process and that he thought that the process was ready to progress to another level.

“The management committee of Armagh county board wish to acknowledge the contribution of Paul, in terms of his energy, commitment, loyalty, vision and selflessness, to Armagh.”

The county’s All-Ireland winning captain and former Kildare manager Kieran McGeeney, who joined Grimley’s management team this year, is the stand-out candidate to succeed him.