No fizz in football championship draw

The structures of the championship completely devalues the provinces, so neither players nor supporters will have paid much attention to the 2011 draws, writes Ciaran Whelan.

 

From my perspective, when I was playing the championship draw was a very important night. You were glued to it and when you got the date you put in your calendar and focused on that from then on. But this year it went off with a whimper and it’s a clear indictment of where the championship in its current format was at.

I think only the weaker counties will have sat down and watched it with any interest on Thursday night to see if it would throw up some ties that might help them progress to a provincial final. But it didn’t even make headlines in the papers or on the news. The format as it stands now is dead on his feet.

We can’t take away what a provincial title would have meant to Sligo or Monaghan or Louth this year. It’s still a huge honour to some counties, and I wouldn’t want to degrade a provincial medal, but the recognition of winning one in the current format has gone, because the bigger teams just don’t have the same ambition for a provincial title. We’ve seen too many times over the last few years how a good run in the qualifiers, playing every weekend during the month of July, puts teams in a far better position come the quarter-final weekend.

You look at the best All-Ireland team, Kerry, this year. Jack O’Connor lay down a marker this year, he didn’t want a tour around the country, so he focused on peaking for the Cork game and they went on and won a Munster title. Come the first weekend of August, though, they were caught on the hop. In hindsight, Jack O’Connor will probably wonder whether it was a good decision, whether he wouldn’t have been better off taking the qualifier route that served them well the year before.

I fear for Louth. Some people have an assumption that they will be back in a Leinster final, but I wouldn’t be sure.

I feel that the bigger teams are using the provincial championships to experiment, not really firming up their best team until the qualifiers. It all adds up to devalue provincial titles. I don’t expect change to happen today or tomorrow, but I would like to see change to the format being explored.

There’s also the issue of timing. Why does the championship draw take place in the first week of October, seven or eight months before the games will be played? I can understand the GAA have to have their fixtures master-plan in place but having it at this time of year doesn’t make sense. It’s a few weeks after the All-Ireland finals and the GAA has gone off the radar, so it’s never going to get the exposure that it might get at some stage in the New Year when the appetite is back again, people are preparing for the national leagues, everyone is looking forward to a new season.

Expectations

To the draw itself, there are opportunities for the weaker counties in some of the provinces to get to a provincial decider. All the big teams in Leinster – Dublin, Meath and Kildare – are in the one side of the draw so it’s been described as a chance for Louth to get back to another Leinster final. There is a chance for them but I fear for them as well. There will be higher expectation levels for them and they have to be very careful.

Some people have an assumption that they will be back in a Leinster final, and there has been speculation that they could meet Meath again. But I wouldn’t be sure. There could be a chance for another team on that side of the draw. Offaly won a couple of games in the qualifiers this year and ran Down fairly close. Westmeath have a new management in place. Wexford are in that side of the draw too. Louth won’t get anything easy. The surprise element has gone and they could be up against it.

In Munster, Limerick are trying hard to make a breakthrough and they’ve been very unlucky over the last few years. The question has be asked: do Kerry and Cork really want a Munster title? Cork came through the back-door and won the All-Ireland this year. Kerry did the same last year. The one thing that isn’t in Limerick’s favour is that they’ll have to beat both Kerry and Cork if they’re to come out on top, and that’s always going to be difficult for them.

There isn’t a whole lot to be said about Connacht. Galway and Mayo look likely to meet in the semi-finals, so that’ll be an interesting battle with two new managers in Tomas O Flatharta and James Horan.

O Flatharta didn’t seem to have the full support of everyone in the county when he was appointed during the week. A lot of Galway people would probably like to have seen a Galway man in charge. They’ve chopped and changed a lot, they’ve had insiders and outsiders but they haven’t had much stability for the last few years. O Flatharta did well with Paidi O Se in Westmeath and did reasonably well there in his own right too. The level of expectations in Galway has dipped a lot of late so he’s coming in at the right time, and you never know, he could be the man to bring them together.

On the other side of the draw, Sligo will hope to make amends for this year, when they flopped having beaten Galway and Mayo to make it to a Connacht final. They’ll be happy enough with the draw. If they get past Leitrim they meet Roscommon again, so there’s a good chance for them to get back to another final.

Ulster has thrown up a few interesting looking ties, like it always does. Tyrone play Monaghan in a repeat of this year’s final. Eamonn McEneaney is a good guy and he’ll bring a professional set-up to Monaghan, but I think his biggest battle is the next few months and winning the players over following Seamus McEnaney’s exit. That situation will take the expectations off Monaghan a bit and that could help them, but it’s a tough draw.

Armagh and Down is the other intriguing one. Armagh won Division 2 of the League earlier in the year, when they beat Down in the final, and they have a bit to prove after their early exit from the championship this year. Down, on the other hand, will have ambitions to win an Ulster because it’s a long time since they’ve won one, so that could be a good battle.

So there are some good games to look forward to. The trouble is, with the championship structure the way it is, they just don’t matter as much as they should. Surely that has to change, sooner or later.

 

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