It is hardly a surprise that Jim Gavin’s Football Review Committee (FRC) has become a template that people want to apply to all manner of ills within the association.
The ultimate impact of the FRC on the game as a spectacle is too early to discern, although initial signs are promising. But the modus operandi has been undeniably impressive in the speed of detailed research, advancement of proposals and the consensus building around them.
There have been rumblings of discontent about aspects of the rule changes or enhancements, but nothing has built up a particular head of steam. One point made to Gavin by an experienced practitioner is worth amplifying.
That argument maintains that the problem with football as a spectacle, let alone an enjoyable spectacle, is not so much the aesthetics of the game but the competitiveness of the fixtures.
Even the FRC, when reluctantly parking the four-point goal, privately indicated that the fears of one-sidedness in matches was more a structural problem for the GAA than a football-related issue.
Most people, though, would agree that the game is improved by creating more contests for possession and thinning out the middle of the field, as well as incentivising long kicks. The problem with these changes is that they decrease the prospects of competitiveness.
Whatever the aesthetic view on parking the bus, it is one way of coping for inferior teams, even if it usually just shrinks the margin of defeat while offering no prospect – however fantastical – of actually winning.
Opening out the football match makes those tactics virtually impossible. Then, at the far end, the availability of two-pointers to elite marksmen and the associated dilemmas they present to defenders intensifies the scoreboard jeopardy.
All of which focuses attention back on the provincial championships and their manifest failings. There’s no need to reiterate those problems, but suffice it to note that they create the one big competition that has no tiered system and therefore guarantees mismatches.
Of course, this development isn’t strictly new, but the extent of Dublin’s domination in Leinster and Kerry’s in Munster has intensified. In the past, not all counties entered the senior championship, confining themselves instead to junior. With a full complement, apart from Kilkenny, this year marks the 20th anniversary of Dublin starting to monopolise the province.
Only in 2010 did they fail to lift the Delaney Cup. For Kerry it’s once in 12 seasons – a thunderclap event during Covid in an empty Páirc Uí Chaoimh under an appropriately apocalyptic deluge.
There is a representative merit to the provincial championships. In those old days, a county could dream of a provincial coup, not the actual title but maybe an unexpected win over more affluent neighbours. If it didn’t happen, well and good – everyone was entitled to a shot and after it had missed, there was no further demand on you.
The qualifiers disturbed that a little, keeping the lowliest counties in a state of suspended animation until their second chance came around. One administrator, ambition clearly unfired by the prospect, said that the system was less a right to a second chance than a right to be beaten twice.
Now the Tailteann Cup stretches the engagement even farther with three group matches to follow a defeat that might well have been what the late Cavan sage PJ Carroll used to describe as a “notorious hammering”.
Even the Leinster Council, long attached to the staging of its championship matches in Croke Park, is now acknowledging that the football semi-finals need to move out of the stadium.
That representative function also applies to venues. If a county can dream of participation, they should also be able to host matches every so often. Extraordinarily, for instance, next weekend’s Leinster Wicklow-Dublin quarter-final will be the Dubs’ first big competitive visit to Aughrim in just over 64 years when they met in league.
It is also the very first time a championship fixture between the counties has been played at the venue: even beyond Croke Park, it has been fixed mostly for Newbridge but also Wexford Park and Portlaoise.
That is perfectly valid, but is it the right pairing for an elite championship as opposed to an open competition in which everyone gets to play regardless of status?
Big attendances generally depend on the anticipation of competitive play, but they are also influenced by the identity of the contestants.
A casual conversation in the corridors of Croke Park about 15 years ago confirmed that the most desired teams at the box office were Cork hurlers and Armagh footballers, a pair who fortuitously are back at the top of their respective games.
Evidence, were it needed, came on Sunday when the Cork-Tipp league final exploited both its curious novelty in being a first since 1960 and the crest of the current Cork wave. It rounded off an excellent league for Pat Ryan’s team who, as well as landing a first national title in 27 years, have turned their Saturday night matches into appointment events with home attendances averaging more than 20,000.
In general, the hurling league has had radically larger crowds for the simple reason that the hierarchical structure has guaranteed a higher level of desirable fixtures, something that has conversely made relegation for Wexford and Clare an expensive business for next season.
Armagh’s championship presence in the first decade of the century persuaded the Ulster Council to shift three provincial finals to Croke Park in 2004, ‘05 and ‘06, in the process drawing crowds of 67,136 (vs Donegal), 93,000 (vs Tyrone, including replay) and 50,732 (vs Donegal).
You’d wonder if there might again be interest should Armagh and Donegal reach the provincial final in relocating to Croke Park for the clash of the All-Ireland champions and Ulster champions.
