Relegation returns to Football Championship formats
The 2025 County Senior Football Championship will be run on the same as 2024 but with relegation added following a decision made at last Monday night’s November meeting of Tipperary County Board at The Dome, FBD Semple Stadium.
By Liam Hogan
The 2025 County Senior Football Championship will be run on the same as 2024 but with relegation added following a decision made at last Monday night’s November meeting of Tipperary County Board at The Dome, FBD Semple Stadium.
Following a proposal by the Tipperary Football Committee, the fourteen teams will be divided into two of four and one of six, with the top two teams in the four team groups plus the top four of the group of six making it eight teams into the quarter finals, the same as this past year.
Football Committee chairperson Fearghal McDonnell said the ambition was to reduce the number of teams to twelve for 2025 which would need three teams to be relegated to intermediate before they were joined by the winners of the intermediate championship.
“We have to bring the number of teams involved in the senior championship down to twelve and the same for intermediate with eight teams in Premier Junior A grade,” he said.
The motion was similar to one from Ardfinnan, who proposal didn’t have relegation with their delegate William Nagle saying the idea was to make the various championships as strong as possible with teams playing opposition of the same standard thus reducing the number of walkovers.
When put to a vote, the Tipperary football committee won 28 to 13.
Other Motions
Eire Og Annacarty/Donohill proposed that Divisions 1, 2, 3 & 4 of the County Hurling League to mirror how teams fared in the Dan Breen the previous year. They suggested that Division 1 would have twelve teams, divided into two groups of six, be made up of the eight teams that reached the Dan Breen quarter finals plus the third placed teams in each group to make up the twelve. They added that the remaining divisions be organised in the same manner depending on how clubs fared in the Dan Breen, The Seamus O Riain and the intermediate championships. The one key aspect was that promotion and relegation would be a part of the leagues going forward.
CCC Chairperson Michael Tierney said the motion be taken as a recommendation.
A Ballylooby/Castlegrace motion for the County Football League to commence in early March before the County Hurling League with the aim of playing the Football League Finals in late May or very early June depending on the number of teams in each division was also taken a recommendation, as was their proposal on playing the County Junior ‘A’ Football quarter finals on the same weekend as the County Junior ‘B’ Football quarter finals (two weeks later usually) as opposed to the same weekend as the Senior/Intermediate/Premier Junior Quarter Finals.
An Upperchurch/Drombane motion dealt with the increasing problems of teams giving walkovers especially at Under 19 grades, proposing: “To reduce the possibility of a walkover been given in a competition, we propose that every club pays a bond of €1,500 to the County Board when submitting the annual affiliation details for the club.
The bond will be repaid in full when the full schedule of championship games has been completed.
The Upperchurch/Delegate said teams saw it as the easy way thinking the walkover was the only team effected was their own not realising they are denying other clubs game time. There were fines used before, but they are wondering if there is a better way of dealing with it.
Michael Tierney said the motion was out of order but agreed there was concern about walkovers especially at under 19 grades and more often at divisional level.