You may not have noticed, but the Ulster football championship has been comprehensively, devastatingly defanged this week. From 2020, teams drawn in the preliminary round of the old bearpit won’t have to play in it again for the following two years.
This is a rather small, and rather belated attempt to try and even up the score for teams in Ulster, who have it tough enough as it is. Only four teams have ever won the Anglo-Celt having played in the preliminary round, a statistic that shocks me every time I read it.
That Donegal under Jim McGuinness managed to do it in consecutive years, in 2011 and 2012, is testament to that team’s ability.
Mattie McGleenan, the Cavan coach, laid it out in pretty stark terms for the Daily Mirror this week when asked if he was in favour of the new changes.
“I don’t see any sense in it. There’s a greater need to look at the structure of the entire championship. Take Roscommon, whom we played in the [Division Two] league final a few weeks ago. We are out in three weeks’ time and would face four very intense games to win an Ulster title.
“Roscommon have an extra few weeks preparation and then play Leitrim or New York to get into the Connacht final. Win that, and they’re in the Super 8s. Tell me how that’s fair.”
Indeed. One would indeed have a pretty hard time arguing that one. But that wasn’t really the question, was it?
Of course the provincial system throws up anomalies like this, like Kerry having to beat Clare, then Tipperary, and then Clare to get to an All-Ireland semi-final in 2016. This tweak to the Ulster championship is a tiny adjustment to ensure a marginally fairer shake for teams. It certainly didn’t seem like an opportunity to sound off on the radical unfairness of the entire championship structure.
The introduction of the Super 8s has been a perfect illustration of an idea getting pilloried for all the things it isn’t doing, instead of being judged on what it’s meant to do. It’s a money-grab, it’s elitist, it’s going to widen the gap between haves and have-nots . . . I don’t think it’s any of those things, but smart people seem to think it is, and they are welcome to their opinion.
But it’s also an attempt, similar to what happened in Ulster this week, to try and even up the score with regard to our hopelessly lopsided choice of summertime distraction. Kerry are the only Division One side in Munster this year. If they have an easy time of it in their province, they will at least have to play five competitive games to win the 2018 All-Ireland title.
Best team
That was not the case until now. They can afford to lose one of those games, it’s true. But they will have to win games, and a few of them, against seasoned Division One teams to prove they’re the best team in the country.
Mattie McGleenan was correct to look across at his opponents’ dug-out a couple of weeks ago in Croke Park, chart their comparative seasons and ask “how is that fair”. It’s not fair, of course it’s not. But it’s fairer this year than it was last year.
The concept of fairness is very much an a la carte offering though. It’s easier for Roscommon to get there than it is for Cavan, but if either of them want to win the All-Ireland, they’ll be tested in late July and August, when these things are meant to be won. The Super 8s helps make the process of deciding the best team in the country fairer.
Does adding a modicum of fairness to the latter stages of the competition, by its very nature, make the competition more unfair on the 75 per cent of the country that won’t be in the last 8 in any given year? In the absence of a tiered system, the GAA All-Ireland senior football championship has to be all things to all men – not just a way of finding out the best team in the country, but a competition everyone can feel a part of.
Twenty-three teams have reached the quarter-finals since the introduction of the qualifiers in 2001, so the numbers would suggest that reaching the last 8 is not as difficult as those who decry the Super 8s as elitist would have it.
But the unfortunate thing about competition is that teams get beaten – often the same teams, over and over again, at the same stage. The inability of the Super 8s to change that immutable fact is a pity, but it’s also not why it was brought in.
The GAA has a number of utterly daft constraints placed on its ability to run off their championships. We wouldn’t do without them, but working within those constraints to make the Ulster championship, and the All-Ireland championships, just a little fairer is the least we can do.
