IN ALL FAIRNESS - Are the days of League finals numbered?

What is it about leagues that make them so unloved in the GAA!

Not only are they constantly talked down compared to championship there isn’t really any hunger to get to the finals, let alone win them. It comes from the tradition where championship is everything, at both club and inter-county, and you are constantly building towards championship and anything that impacts that focus in any way is a distraction.

It’s to Allianz’s credit they have stuck with the GAA for thirty years as sponsors of the National Leagues, but I suppose any publicity is better than no publicity and regardless of how serious some counties take the leagues, they still generate a lot of newspaper copy, radio & tv debate, and bar-stool conversation every spring.

There was a debate last week when it came to the hurling league semi-finals over who would be more driven to get to a final considering the close proximity to the start of the championship. Cork and Waterford are the last two standing and considering next Saturday’s decider is just fifteen days before they host Limerick and Tipperary respectively in the Munster openers, it will be interesting to see the teams that will be put out and whether either Kieran Kingston or Liam Cahill are prepared to risk winning silverware, which their respective counties haven’t won a lot in recent times, so their teams are primed for the bigger games that are to come.

One wonders are the days of the knockout stages in the National League numbered. Both the hurling and football leagues have always been secondary to the championship, that will never change. However, the constricted nature of the calendar and the quick changeover time from the end of the league to the beginning of the championship now means managers can’t really go hard at winning the league and be primed for the start of the championship

Next weekend we’ll have nine league finals, four in football and five in hurling, however, only the only finals with something at stake are the four hurling finals outside of division 1 as winning the league means being promoted, including the 2A final between Down and Westmeath at FBD Semple Stadium on Saturday where the winner will be playing division 1 hurling next year, and if it were to be Down, what a great boon it will be for Ulster hurling if they were to have two teams in the top flight after Antrim successful retained their status last weekend with a convincing win over Offaly.

Back to the value of the leagues and one wonders if the GAA are missing a trick with still having league finals. If you take the four football finals for example, there will hardly be 40,000 people at Croke Park over the two days. Would it not be better to give every team an eighth league game per campaign where all 32 counties are playing, and you’d get a combined attendance greater than 40,000, and everyone gets to end the league at the same time and no team is at a particular advantage or disadvantage by not making the knockout stages.

Another aspect of the leagues, particularly in football, is that not being relegated is seen as more important that winning it, as playing a higher grade of league football is the ideal development ground for the championship.

Over the last few years, the final round of the National Football Leagues has turned into one of the great sporting days on both radio and television (kudos to TG4) as there tends to be so much at stake in the race for promotion and relegation, and we got it again last Sunday when Monaghan saved themselves and relegated both Dublin and Kildare with the last kick of the game in Clones.

You can’t buy drama and exposure like that and I would concur with Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s idea that in next years final round, the four divisions should be split over two days and separate throw-in times where more of that drama can be sold to the public as it’s not just about division 1, as we had Cork and Offaly going down to the wire to stay in division 2, while the promotion and relegations races in divisions 3 & 4 also went down to the final day.

Another reason why the days of league finals are numbered is that once a county isn’t involved, there isn’t much neutral interest. Unlike the past, league finals aren’t a stop the day kind of occasion. Few people outside of Kerry, Mayo, Cork, and Waterford will be making it their business to plan their day to be able to watch the division 1 football and hurling finals. Tipperary fans will have a passing glance at the hurling final considering they will face Waterford and Cork in the coming weeks, but in the greater scheme of things the result won’t mean that much, bar one side suffers a psychologically bad beating, and/or a player picks up a red card which puts them out of the first round in Munster.