Proposal on the format of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship

Context

At Congress 2016 the Association addressed the issues of player overtraining and burnout, the structure of the All-Ireland senior football championship and a fixtures calendar that does not provide club players with a fair schedule of games. Progress was made on improving the situation on overtraining and burnout, but the structure of the football championship and our calendar of games remain unresolved problems. We must, therefore, continue to seek solutions to these twin dilemmas. This may take some time to achieve, but these are pressing matters. Our club players need a fairer schedule of games, and we must not let up in our efforts to achieve this. Our championship structure is regularly called into question, although it has not yet been possible to find general agreement on a new structure.

It may well be the case that there will not be a ‘magic-bullet’ solution to either problem, and that the necessary structural reforms will occur on an incremental basis. Indeed, given the democratic nature of the decision-making processes of the Association and the great variance in opinion about the best solutions to be adopted, it could well be more productive to seek to find agreement now on more modest reforms than to do nothing in the hope that agreement on comprehensive restructuring can be found. It is in this spirit that the present proposal to make adjustments to the All-Ireland senior football championship is offered.

 

The All-Ireland Senior Football Championship: The Current Structure

The current structure of provincial championships and All-Ireland qualifiers, in operation since 2001, is well embedded, respects tradition, and provides to every county a second-chance match and pathways for continuing progression. Yet it has obvious drawbacks, most obviously an unhealthy predictability about the outcome in two of the provincial championships: Dublin has won eleven of the last twelve Leinster titles, while either Kerry or Cork has won every Munster senior championship in the past 80 years with the exception of Clare’s win in 1992.

It is often argued that the qualifier system has been to the benefit of the traditionally stronger counties, but it is also the case that the strongest counties are liable to qualify for the closing stages of the All-Ireland championship, as the best teams usually do in any sporting competition. And the argument about an in-built bias towards stronger counties does not adequately acknowledge the advantages of the qualifiers: they produce novel pairings, and they have allowed a number of traditionally less strong counties to reach an All-Ireland quarter-final. For many counties, the qualifiers are the route to a big day in Croke Park that they would never otherwise experience. Tipperary footballers have just offered us the most thrilling proof of how the qualifiers can also favour less traditionally strong football counties.

In 2015 An Coiste Bainistíochta invited counties’ submissions on a revised structure for the All-Ireland senior football championship. It did so for three reasons: (i) a persistent criticism from some that the current championship format had grown lacklustre; (ii) the reality that there are some counties that cannot realistically aspire to winning either a provincial or an All-Ireland title; (iii) the incidence of one-sided games.

The debate on the An Coiste Bainistíochta initiative allowed a number of conclusions to be reached. These – along with the imperative to support our clubs – translate into the following constraints, within which we must seek solutions to any reform of the championship structure:

 

 

 

Medium-term reform of the All-Ireland Championship Structure

In light of the An Coiste Bainistíochta initiative, it is clear that the options for immediate radical and comprehensive change are quite limited. The proposal outlined in this document seeks to present a modest adjustment to the championship format that would produce a more exciting senior football championship within the current provincial championship structure and in a way that should not have a negative impact on the playing of county club championships.

It will be seen that this proposal adds eight extra matches to the provincial and All-Ireland senior football championship programme. However, when one allows for the abolition of the Allianz League semi-finals, the increase in the overall annual inter-county senior football programme is reduced to six matches. And, as can be seen below in a separate section, tighter scheduling and a revised policy on replays can bring improvements to the situations that affect the scheduling of club fixtures and the availability of inter-county players to clubs.

 

PROPOSAL

Under this proposal, the format of the All-Ireland senior football championship would be as follows:

 

 

 

PROVINCIAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: Knock-out format as at present.

 

 

 

ALL-IRELAND QUALIFER SERIES

 

 

 

Round 1 Sixteen teams that do not qualify for provincial semi-finals

 

Round 2 Eight round 1 winners play eight defeated provincial semi-finalists

 

Round 3 Eight round 2 winners play each other on an open-draw basis

 

Round 4 Four round 3 winners play four provincial runners-up

 

 

 

Proposal 1:

 

 

 

 

 

 

QUARTER-FINAL STAGE

 

 

 

Proposal 2:

 

 

 

The current quarter-final stage of the championship to be replaced by a Group Stage, contested by the four provincial champions and the four round 4 qualifier winners.

 

 

 

The group stage will be organised on a league basis with two groups of four teams, with each team playing the other three teams once. (See below for tie-breaking devices.)

 

 

 

 

 

Year 1 groupings (succeeding years could be based a rota system):