IN ALL FAIRNESS - No such thing as perfect GAA schedule

We should be at the time of the GAA hurling and football championships where all the chat should be about the matches, but as tends to happen, most of the talk is about everything but.

On the hurling side of things, there is the timing of this Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter final double-header at FBD Semple Stadium. As in 2022, the biggest games of the weekend, in either code, have been reduced to Saturday lunchtime when they should be in primetime.

The reason is the continued platforming of the Tailteann Cup with the prime Sunday afternoon slots. To get that new competition up and running in 2022, giving them the primary viewing slots in its first couple of years made sense to boost its profile but this needs to be the last year of it. The interest levels aren’t there among the footballing public, apart from Antrim, Laois, Down and Sligo, who will be involved in this years semi-finals, and they’ll do well to get 15,000 into Croke Park on Sunday.

With only five senior hurling games left in the championship, restricting them to the worst slot of the weekend makes no sense when they should be up front on Sunday afternoon, getting the maximum exposure. Instead, what should be a full-house in Thurles will be anything but early on Saturday afternoon, also not helped by the clash with Feile na nGael, hosted this year by Wexford, and whose supporter base will be massively reduced by virtue of having to host this massive under 15 event. Wexford tried to get their game with Clare moved to Sunday but as can happen in the GAA, common sense goes out the window as for the counties who voted against the late change in schedule, if they were in Wexford’s situation, they’d be looking for change too.

Another reason for the early throw-in times on Saturday is due to RTE having to show the URC final, which they rotate every second year with TG4. Up to last weekend, it looked like an Irish team would be involved but now that is not the case, and this match has been moved to the RTE News Channel. Initially it looked like this provided an opening to move the hurling matches to a slot later in the afternoon and into the evening to aid Wexford fans, but all RTE have done is move the Euro soccer games from the news channel to RTE2. That is a glimpse of their priority, and as tends to be the case, the GAA isn’t towards the top of the list.

After the end of this years championship, there is still another three years on the GAA’s current rights deal with RTE, and when it is renegotiated, the GAA have got to play hardball with RTE, TG4, or whoever is interested in showing their games, instead of being grateful for what they get.

The split season isn’t the reason for the GAA’s current fixture issues, it is their own scheduling errors which sees the first truly knockout weekend of the hurling and football championship competing against each other on Saturday, with a secondary competition taking prominence on Sunday, it makes absolutely no sense.

GAA President Jarlath Burns has hinted more change is on the horizon with the extension of the inter-county season back into August but is also suggesting the football championship format might change, reducing the number of games to create more jeopardy. So, you are going to create more time to play less games if that it my reading of it!

The reason the current football championship format was voted in was primarily to give teams more games outside of the provincial championship, and they came up with the group of 4 concept that most counties use for club championships and are generally well received. However, what doesn’t seem to be understood by those railing against it is you can’t have more games plus have jeopardy in every game at the same time.

Instead of changing from the current format, what is needed is greater promotion of the existing games, cheaper tickets, competitions on local radio and newspaper for tickets, players and managers giving interviews to promote the games, daily television advertisements of the weekends games rather than the generic “where we all belong” ad that doesn’t put bums on seats.

I hear a lot about 24 games played to eliminate four teams but weren’t more games that people wanted. If you play 24 games to eliminate eight teams, it would lead to a lot of dead-rubber third round games whereas last weekend all sixteen teams had something to play for. You only had to see the reaction of the Armagh players when they drew with Galway, as it confirmed top spot in the group and progression straight to the quarter finals and avoiding the rigours of an extra game in the preliminary quarter finals.

There is nothing wrong with the current football championship format, it just needs time to fully bed in, rather than allowing those that grew up with the old straight knockout format failing to understand that more games means less jeopardy.