System Failure

[Fido]

So Offaly's interest in the Championships ends for another year. There'll be plenty of opinion about how we performed and where we go from here from others on this site I'm sure and I'll leave that to them. Suffice it to say that we're at a low ebb, but then we've been there and back before. What's on my mind, and it's been underlined by today's results in a way, is the absolute folly of the championship structure as it now stands, particularly in hurling. When the straight knock-out system was scrapped it was ostensibly to help "weaker" counties by giving them a second chance, as well as provide more games. It has certainly provided more games but if anything, the stronger teams have benefited to a much greater extent. Take Cork for instance - they could potentially lose two games this year and still be All Ireland champions. I'm not interested in Offaly being given an easier ride than anybody else, the system should allow the best team in the country be crowned champions at the end of the year and clearly we're not there yet. But there has to be fairness and rationality in the system or the risk is that hurling at the very highest level will be reduced to an even smaller group of counties than it already has. How is it right, for instance, that points difference be used to seperate teams in the league? Never mind the effect it had on Offaly, how can the GAA say with a straight face that it wants to see counties like Down, Laois or Antrim grow in strength when the system encourages stronger teams to go all out to humiliate them, make them wonder why they even bother? Or take the case this year in Leinster. By virtue of being drawn in the weaker side of the Leinster championship, Wexford beat Dublin in the last minute, surrender abjectly to Kilkenny, and find themselves in the All-Ireland quarter final, against a Tipp team who will have played 7 matches in as many weeks. Offaly, to get to the same point would have had to have either beaten Kilkenny, or beaten at least one of Tipp or Cork as well as Dublin, who tonight they overcame with much greater ease than Wexford did. How is that right? You can say it's the luck of the draw but it's completely arbitrary, and not the way to encourage teams to rise up to the level where Waterford and Kilkenny find themselves. I know this has all been thrashed out at GAA Conferences and every now and then somebody has a similar rant to this one in the paper, but surely it's not rocket science to fix things so everybody gets
a few games to see where their level truly is and both players and fans get a decent summer? With that in mind, here's my two cents about how to fix all the problems in hurling overnight. I expect it to be shot down, but sure who cares?

1. Keep the league short, have a Division 1 A + B again and let the table toppers in both play a straight final. Never mind the messing with quarter finals. Let teams use it to blood players and experiment and give the spare time to the clubs.

2. Let them keep their beloved Munster Championship (which we shouldn't forget wasn't always in such rude health as it seems to be now, and may not always be...) Play it off on a league basis. 5 teams, 4 good games each, anybody might win it.

3. Have Leinster, Ulster and Galway amalgamate into a tri-provincial championship, call it what you want. Play that off as a league as well. Kilkenny might at present win it handily, but from an Offaly perspective
games against Galway, Wexford, Laois, Dublin, Antrim would give us a fairer test and a better idea of where we really are. And who knows, maybe not such a bad taste in the mouth when it's all over.

4. When it gets to the nitty gritty you could have the group winners straight into All-Ireland semis, with the second and third teams to play off against the opposite group for the chance to meet them. Or top teams meeting second teams in semis, whichever. I think in my very humble opinion that you'd get a better championship all round like this, every team could expect to see a win or two or at least some close games, and at the end of it all you could have no complaints with who won out.

I could get started on the football and the Tommy Murphy/ Division 4 fiasco but I'm tired now and I want a drink.
Fair play to the hurlers tonight by the way, and please God let the U21s get the break that the seniors "can't seem to buy" these days!

[Sydthebeat]

At the moment i would argue that any one of the five munster teams would beat Galway, Wexford, Laois, Dublin, Antrim and Offaly....

therefore i cannot see your system working where a max of 2 teams from munster have an all ireland chance with kilkenny plus one other....

yes i agree that its somewhat ridiculous that a team can loose 2 championship games and still be crowned all ireland champions... but the point being that every team sis in the same position... lets give a whatif.. whatif shane dooley had scored that goal??? we could be in an all ireland quarter final.... maybe thats exactly where we are....

your system is basically a second league... albeit one much more important than the other.... while it may be advantageous to Offaly, it would be the deathknell to any other county wishing to make inroads in the championship.....

while the current system is not perfect, it is reasonable.....

[Fido]

I'd agree that the the moment Munster teams have the upper hand, but these things are cyclical. Anyway, the only reason I suggested the Munster/ Rest of Ireland scenario is that the abolition of the munster championship is always used as a stumbling block to real reform. If counties were happy to accept a two or four group Champions League style format across provincial boundaries, all the better.
All I know is that at the moment Wexford and Offaly are getting a hard time in the press and the hurling world for basically being in the shadow of Kilkenny. I suspect that counties like Limerick, Tipp or Clare at the present time, while being very competetive in Munster, wouldn't do a whole heap better than ourselves or Wexford in an early-season, provincial scenario. Likewise, I believe Offaly or Wexford, freed from the stranglehold of Kilkenny, would over a short period of time improve our standards if we were playing in Munster (assuming we avoided Cork in the first round every year...)
I also see Nicky Brennan basically rubbishing the qualifier system, and Cyril Farrell on the Sunday Game advocating the scrapping of the provinces and an open draw knock out. So there's a recognised need for change. An open draw would only reintroduce the element of arbitrary chance that thwarts teams who need steady development - you could still get Kilkenny in the first round and it's all over. What I like about a league or group based format is that every team can aspire to success at its own level - we could get beaten by Kilkenny say, but good performances against Galway, Wexford or whoever would still leave you feeling you had had a decent year, and offer encouragement to players to keep improving.
I don't care whether it's a system exactly like the one I proposed happens, but there is a need for change that offers hope to teams and good quality fare to hurling supporters. A league based system (that everybody treats with equal importance, unlike the National League) is the system most likely to produce a fair outcome over a season, while also giving a guaranteed number of summer games to every team.

[Lone Shark]

There is no question but the Munster Championship is the big barrier to any real change. The funny thing is that people down there are incapable of realising that when 55,000 people pack Semple stadium for a game between Waterford and Limerick, it's more because both teams are going somewhere and not because here's the field where John Doyle and Christy Ring used to ply their trade all those years ago.

The thing to be remembered about league formats is that you've got to avoid dead rubbers. Whatever about any injustice there is now, can you imagine how we would feel if we had beaten Tipperary then lost to Cork, only for Cork to keep all their big names off the team last Saturday in Thurles and Tipp to win against a 50% strength Cork side? We'd feel robbed, even if it was genuine. To that end I agree that some form of second chance like we had before the groups is probably closer to what we'll revert to. I like the idea of two groups of six myself, but only if you have clear rewards for every placing in the group. Also who do you put into Munster? Geographically, he only ones that make sense are Galway - but that won't be let happen either.

To me a big part of the problem stems from the fact that powerful men are given too much influence in the GAA. If they want to have a Munster championship - fine - but then don't complain that Kilkenny get an easy run, or that only two Munster teams can reach an All Ireland semi final. If Galway don't want to go into Leinster, then fine - but stop gerrymandering the qualifier groups so that they're guaranteed an easy draw. It should have been all eight teams into the one pot and see what comes out. If Antrim, Laois, Dublin and Offaly all ended up on the one side, well then great - suddenly you have keenly contested qualifiers all round and novel pairings in the quarters. If people kick up, well then dismantle Munster or force Galway into Leinster.

Personally I'd love to see what Frank Murphy or Christy Cooney would say if they were presented with that - two groups of six, one All Ireland semi finalist out of each group, Galway into Munster and Antrim into Leinster. Let them keep their Munster championship then.

[manfromdelmonte]

aye. just don't give Galway the option - just lump them into the munster championship to make it 6 teams! Now they have to start winning games!

Antrim and even Co. Down into Leinster.

Galway need to be put somewhere and told to just get on with it. they are either complaining they don't get enough tough games or that munster would be too tough for them

[Fido]

You could have a "Northern" and "Southern" division of teams then. For the scholars out there, you could call them Craobh Leatha Chuinn and Creaobh Leatha Mogha to signify the ancient north-south division of Ireland. This should shut up the "traditionalists", reinstating as it does a historical division that predates the provincial system by about five hundred years.

[Lone Shark]

You could have a "Northern" and "Southern" division of teams then. For the scholars out there, you could call them Craobh Leatha Chuinn and Creaobh Leatha Mogha to signify the ancient north-south division of Ireland. This should shut up the "traditionalists", reinstating as it does a historical division that predates the provincial system by about five hundred years.

An excellent bit of history homework right there!. Feel free to pick out any one of these and put it at the top of your copy page .....

[Fido]

Are they chocolate stars or gold stars? Prefer the white chocolate buttons myself.