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Well, well, well, well, well, well, well (as the Wizard in the Mr Men cartoons is wont to say from time to time), here we are once more at the eve of another championship season. Keith Duggan in today’s Irish Times has a nice, moody article (premium content, sub required) about how the perennial hopes that so many counties harbour about All-Ireland success ends in perennial despair. Does this sound vaguely familiar?
It brings to mind a banner I recall seeing photographed at a Connacht final back in the mid-eighties, when Liam O’Neill (our Kev’s old man) was our Bainisteor. It read “Liam’s Lions are Hungry” and underneath was the punchline “Haven’t Eaten since 1951”. Fairly mangy lions they’d have been even then, let alone what they’d be like now. But, once again, we set out in anticipation of a new championship campaign, thinking that this might be the year that we’ll do it. Or maybe not.
It’s a fairly low-key start tomorrow. Sligo open the Connacht championship by playing New York in an utterly pointless match on the other side of the Atlantic. And on a plastic pitch too. Sligo will win easily enough and then it’ll be someone else’s turn next year. Why on earth is this charade (and the similar one involving London) allowed to be part of the Connacht championship? It would be like having a bunch of ex-pat Yanks based over here taking part in the American football season, except with the addition of those sissy pads that they wear. I just don’t get it. Away win.
Down and Cavan face off in Ulster. Two counties with a proud All-Ireland history but who are a bit down in the Ulster pecking order these days, this is a contest between two non-contenders for the Ulster title this year. Down have, however, a strong record at minor level in recent years (All-Irelands in 1999 and 2005) and this talent, which is well represented in their lineup tomorrow could sway tomorrow’s clash in their favour.
In Leinster, neighbours Longford and Westmeath (two counties that would be moving West under the “Breheny Plan” – see Thursday’s post) clash at Pearse Park. Both counties briefly lit up the qualifiers last Summer, with Longford toppling Derry before the reborn Kerry lads did for them, while Westmeath sank Galway before getting hammered by the Dubs. This could be a close one but, at Pearse Park, I’d fancy Longford – remember that the Dubs only emerged from there early last Summer with a few points to spare.
That’s it as regards the matches. Elsewhere, the Indo has an interesting table showing who has done well under the qualifiers and who hasn’t. The table placings are based on how many matches counties have won via the qualifiers but this is, of course, a function of how many games each county has played via the backdoor. It comes as no surprise that the top of the table is dominated by Ulster counties (including top team, Derry, with 14 backdoor wins), who occupy four of the top six berths. We’re well down the table, with four wins and four losses but the most chilling stat for me is that relating to Kerry, with nine wins out of ten (their only loss being in the 2002 All-Ireland final). More ammunition about the shortcomings of the current structure, methinks.
And there’s more. Remember I mentioned the other day that, if we win against Galway on the 20th, we get to warm our posteriors for five whole weeks? Well, amigos, that’s only the half of it. If we lose, we get to remain on our derrieres for a further two weeks, as it is only then that the first qualifier round takes place. It gets even better: rounds two and three of the qualifiers then take place over the following two weekends. That’s right: after sitting on our holes for seven weeks after next weekend's opener, we’d have to play on three successive Sundays (again, that’s assuming we remain standing) in July. The little baby elephant that was born in Dublin zoo the other day (now you know why that picture is there) could have come up with better scheduling than this.
Still, mustn’t grumble – the action is almost back on again. And I’ll be back on Monday with a review of tomorrow’s opening shots of dish ear's campaign. Till then.
Yes, folks, that time of year is almost upon us once more. While there are many hints to let you know that it's championship time again, one factor always seems to stand out for me to confirm that the real stuff is on again. No, it's not that godawful theme tune they have on the Sunday Game Live, nor is it Ger Canning's heroically inept commentaries nor, at the other end of the spectrum, is it Michael O Muircheartaigh's melodious audio offerings. It's not even the return of that overbearing buffoon Jimmy Magee to the radio show. Instead, it's a little matter relating to the diction employed by the lads in front of the camera who, invariably, keep making references to something that sounds like dish ear. It goes something like this: "Well now, Joe Brolly, what's different about Donegal dish ear?" or "I don't think he's the same player dish ear" or "they'll be a force to be reckoned with dish ear". You get the idea. Listen carefully this Sunday and when you hear those magic words for the first time, you'll know that the race for the Sam (and for the Liam, it works for hurling too) is back on in earnest.
Maybe it’s because we’re the ones that are so badly affected this year that I’m so agitated about it but, as we’re on the cusp of this year’s championship season, I have to come out and say it: the current structure sucks. And I mean really sucks. The old system was bad enough but the current one is, to my mind, even worse. While I don’t agree with John Maughan, who says we should scrap the qualifiers and revert to the pre-2001 format, I can see where he’s coming from.
A basic, possibly the basic, element of any competition of this kind is that all teams start from the same position and have an equal and fair chance of winning the thing. We are a million miles from this at the moment, with lopsided provinces and a backdoor system that provides the strongest counties with a safety net. Ulster remains a bear-pit, Leinster is also too big but with a wider variation in quality, Munster is a perpetual two-horse race while we have a slightly more competitive but still quite predictable contest in the West.
The scheduling of games sucks too. The Connacht championship starts this weekend (in bloody New York as well!) but, with only seven participants, it still doesn’t conclude until the 8th of July. This lackadaisical approach to scheduling brings its own problems, especially when, as is happening this year, the open draw pits us at the outset against Galway. Say we beat Galway, what then? Well, we sit on our holes for five weeks, that’s what. Before the next outing - against Leitrim. All due respect to the boys from the rushy fields but talk about having the main course served before the soup. Then, it’s a further a two-week break (a sensible time-lag this time) before the Connacht final. Once we’re through Connacht (I’m assuming for the purposes of this discussion that we make it through), we could, as happened last year, be then faced with three matches in three weeks. It makes no bloody sense.
I mentioned a few months ago that some GAA heads were thinking about how to revise the current structure and that a motion on this was being planned for April’s Congress. This never happened and there’s no sense that the GAA hierarchy believes they have a problem with how the championship is currently structured. They should do, however, because attendances at championship matches are falling and the qualifiers, which drew big crowds in 2001 and 2002, are now more poorly attended than many league games. While the GAA may not yet recognise it, the punters are demonstrating their disenchantment with the current state of affairs and, if this trend continues, change will have to come.
So, where do we go? I mentioned the other day that the ladies have come up with an interesting plan for their championship this year but there are others too. Here’s some possible options:
1. The Maughan Plan: revert to the old pre-2001 knockout system.
2. The Breheny Plan: redraw the provinces and introduce a mini-league element to the provincial championships. This is an idea mooted by the Indo’s Martin Breheny (still can't find the link to the article he wrote on this) which would involve fairly minor shifting of counties between provinces (Donegal, Longford and Westmeath into Connacht, Laois and Wexford into Munster) to create 4 "provinces" of eight counties. Breheny then proposes that the provincial championships should be run on the basis of two mini-leagues in each province prior to the provincial semi-finals and finals. Only the provincial winners would go forward (like pre-2001) to the All-Ireland series and the qualifiers would be scrapped.
3. The Mná Plan: use the provincial championships as a gateway to a mini-league All-Ireland series. The top four teams in each province take part in a mini-league stage, which then leads onto All-Ireland quarter-final knockout stage. Unlike all the other options, we'll be able to see this one for real when the ladies use it this year.
4. The Fourgoal McGee Plan: keep the existing provincial championships and create a mini-league format for the All-Ireland series. This could be drawn from either the Provincial champions (1 group of four) or the Provincial finalists (2 groups of four). My thanks to Fourgoal McGee for his comment on Tuesday's post, from which I've drawn this one.
5. The Decouple the Provincial Championships Plan: keep the existing provincial championships but make them a tournament in their own right and remove the link between the provincial championships and the All-Ireland series. The All-Ireland championship would then comprise two separate tournaments, with the Sam Maguire reserved for the stronger sixteen, the Tommy Murphy Cup for the weaker sixteen. Both could be run in the same way, with four groups of four teams, the top two of which would qualify for the All-Ireland quarter-finals. There would probably need to be a significant threat of relegation from the top tier, with either the team finishing last in every group dropping down or else the worst two.
There are other variants on all of these ideas but all the ones I’ve seen have the same new element, i.e. a mini-league at some stage in the process. That’s apart from the Maughan Plan but, with all due respect to John, I think he’s trying to drag us back to the Stone Age. Players and supporters alike want more championship games and so going back to a system where teams spend months preparing for just one Summer outing simply isn’t going to happen again.
If the Breheny Plan were to be adopted, it would provide all counties with a minimum number of championship matches and it would also do away with the current insane situation of having a shit-or-bust match right at the start of the championship season (which we’re faced with on Sunday week). It would also mean that all counties emerging into the All-Ireland series would (barring the odd replay) have played the same number of games up to that point, although the going would still, for example, be tougher in Ulster than in Munster. It would,however, have the major disadvantage of tweaking with who is in what province and this would be likely to prove its downfall.
The Mná/Fourgoal options can be viewed as variants on the same theme. The big advantage in terms of getting support for such a move would be that the existing provincial structures would remain intact. However, that's also it's principal weakness with Ulster still a tough slog to get out of, while Munster will remain a canter so counties won’t reach the mini-league stage in the same condition. Having the mini-league at the start of the All-Ireland series though should mean that teams would need to look at peaking a bit earlier, thus preventing those cute hoors from Kerry sidling slyly into the final without breaking sweat.
The Decoupling Plan deals head-on with the root cause of the unfairness in the present system, i.e. the lopsided nature of the existing provincial championships. If they are given an existence of their own, they might survive and then again they might not. Teams could, for example, use them as souped-up challenges matches prior to the real action getting underway. With a mini-league system seeded on the basis of strength, all counties would face the same, meaningful challenge. It’s the fairest system and the one that should provide more evenly-fought contests. Its radical nature, however, means that it hasn’t a hope in hell of being adopted.
The Mná/Fourgoal option is therefore probably the only one of the above list that could be expected to have a chance of getting through a future Congress. While it doesn’t sort every failing in the current structure, it would be a major improvement on the existing deeply flawed format. We could, of course, be forced to put up with the current mess for many more years but I, for one, cannot see this continuing indefinitely. In the meantime, we head for Salthill . . .
Too darn busy for my liking and after a Bank Holiday weekend too. Plenty of news and stuff in the papers today so let’s get to it, shall we?
First up, a correction on yesterday’s post concerning David Brady. I said his last appearance for us prior to the challenge match on Sunday was the opening NFL match against Kerry back in February. It wasn’t: he also played in the defeat to Donegal and then started in the next match, at home to Limerick, where he went off injured after only nine minutes. Thanks for the correction, Bro, even if you were wrong on the detail too (it was the Limerick match in which he got injured not the Donegal one).
Next, let’s get the inevitable fresh injuries story out of the way. David Clarke (who wouldn’t have been playing against Galway anyway now that Kenneth O’Malley is back in action) and Liam O’Malley (who hopefully will start on the 20th) are both apparently suffering from hamstring problems. Enda Devenney and Kevin O’Neill have also suffered “knocks” in recent days but they’re both expected to be okay for Sunday week.
The same Mayo News story reports that Johnno has trimmed his playing panel a bit, with Barry Regan, Mark Ronaldson and Michael Conroy among those jettisoned. The Davitts man is the most noteworthy name on this list and his fall from grace is a fairly spectacular one, having been on the starting fifteen as recently as the league final. After a very poor performance that day (where he was eventually replaced by Kevin O'Neill), Conroy wouldn’t have been in the frame to start against Galway but the fact that he’s failed even to make the panel for the championship shows Johnno’s intolerance of underachievement.
Onto the Kildare match where, as I mentioned yesterday, we won by six points (a fairly irrelevant fact) and where David Brady and Trevor Mortimor made it through in one piece (a rather more relevant bit of news). Kildare fielded a second-string team – their injury-list is much worse than ours at the minute – and our guys were in the midst of an intensive long weekend’s training so it’s not surprising we won with a bit to spare. We were a point up at the break but, following a number of half-time changes and with the wind behind them, we pulled away to win easily in the second half.
Team selection is, of course, the interesting thing from Sunday. Kenneth O’Malley returned between the sticks, his thumb is fine and Clarke is crocked so he’s the man for that position. As mentioned earlier, Liam O’Malley was out injured and so Aidan Higgins played in the corner with his Ballyhaunis namesake in the other corner. Once again, Paddy Navin started at full-back so it really does look as if Johnno is not going to field James Kilcullen at no.3 against Galway. Navin struggled to contain Kildare’s full forward Adrian Kelly and this led to his replacement at half-time by BJP, with Heaney shifting to centre-back and the Ballina Alpha Male coming on in the middle. Pat Harte also shifted to the middle at half time, with Jimmy Nallen moving to wing-back to replace Trevor Howley, who is also now a doubt for Sunday week (did I mention that earlier? Thought not).
That’s a fair bit of shifting round and, although there was a good deal of the same in the forwards, that was to be expected. Altering the central spine of the team from midfield back this close to the mega clash with Galway . . . I dunno about you folks but I’m not sure I like all this eleventh hour tinkering.
Okay, let’s say that Liam O’Malley and Enda Devenney are okay, as are DB, Trev and the Skipper. Does that give us a team like this for Salthill?
K O’Malley; L O’Malley, BJP, K Higgins; Devenney, Heaney, Gardiner; D Brady, Harte; Dillon, O’Neill, G Brady; C Mort, T Mort, A Moran.
Here’s Kevin McStay’s thoughts on same. Kev reckons a horses-for-courses policy is likely for the full-back position. If this is correct, then Heaney might well start on Joyce as he has a good record against him but, unlike what happened in 2004 and again last year, don’t expect to see the Swinford man in the position thereafter. Kev also feels Pat Harte is the ideal man for the no.10 jersey, with his strong running and his ability to score from distance. It’s one more reason to rue Ronan McGarritty’s continuing absence from the side.
Elsewhere in the papers, there’s a cracking championship supplement with the Irish Times today, which is well worth a read even if it does have Donaghy’s ugly gob on the front of it. (I’ve just checked and the articles don’t appear to be in the online version of the paper). In the supplement, Sean Moran talks about contenders for the All-Ireland and, in discussing us, makes a few cogent observations. He reckons that the league final defeat illustrated “the thin enough range of options available” to us. I’m not sure I’d agree wholeheartedly with this – if you take the shite pitch and Donegal’s huge will to win the NFL out of the equation, we were there or thereabouts and we did have a very successful league campaign, despite all the injuries. His next statement is more chilling and is worth quoting in full: “The trouble for Mayo is that they have to go all the way to the third Sunday in September to substantiate any improvement and that’s a long journey”. Too true. I’d have my doubts as to whether we’re truly up for such a journey this year, I have to admit, but I also know that it's too early in the year for such defeatist talk so strike that from the record, as the LA Law people say.
Also in the same supplement, Keith Duggan backs us to beat Galway but says there could be skin and hair flying if and when we square up to the Rossies in the Connacht final. I like old Keith – he’s had a soft spot for us and all our travails over the years.
That’s it. Just a brief mention of the radical overhaul to the format of the ladies All-Ireland this year, which is also covered in the same Irish Times supplement. This year, the mná are introducing a Champions league type of group stage after the provincial championships, with the four top teams in each province taking part. Two teams would then qualify out of each of the four groups to produce the quarter-final lineup. Fair play to the wimmen – why can’t the fir sort out something like that? As things stand, the chronically imbalanced nature of the current championship can only prove to be its downfall at some point in the future, as the already apparent decline in attendance figures gathers pace. Also, and possibly more to the point, Kerry would find it harder to win if these changes were made, as they'd have to work a damn sight harder to reach the business end of events. Do it now, I say! More (perhaps) on this later in the week.
David Brady came on as a second half sub in yesterday's challenge match with Kildare, the first time he's played for us since the opening NFL match with Kerry back in February. Trevor Mortimor also played in the 0-18 to 0-12 victory at the St Lawrence's club ground, where Conor Mort led the charge with eight points. Setanta has a brief report on the match, as does the Irish Times (sub required). The Times report says that BJ was switched to full-back in a tactical move for the second half but they don't say who started there. That's about all the info there is on the game but the Mayo News tomorrow should have a full match report, along with the lineup and the scorers.
The Mayo ladies this afternoon recorded an emphatic 1-13 to 0-6 win over Galway in the NFL Division 1 final. RTE has all the details of today's encounter at Hyde Park. With just two weeks now to go before the Connacht championship opener in Salthill, the ladies provided a timely demonstration on how to hammer the Heron Chokers. A similar scoreline on the 20th would do just fine, lads.
However, before we go overboard on today's result, it should be pointed out that last weekend Galway hammered our girls 1-18 to 1-7 in the first round of the Connacht championship. The Western has all the gory details of this one. Victory over Galway in the league, defeat to them in the Championship: I'm beginning to regret having brought this topic up at all. But, of course, the championship defeat occurred before the league win and it was only the wimmen so no conclusions should be drawn about what all this might mean for later this month. Does this all make sense?
No word yet on today's challenge match with Kildare but I should hopefully have some news on this tomorrow.
The RTE crowd were out in the bright May sunshine at Croker yesterday for the formal launch of their 2007 championship coverage. The action begins on Sunday week with the Leinster football clash between Longford and Westmeath, followed later in the afternoon by the Ulster football opener between Cavan and Down. Then it’s our turn the following Sunday. Yikes!
This year, over 50 championship matches will be broadcast live by RTE with highlights of all the others shown too. For the first time, live video streaming of the games will be shown on RTE.ie but, as this will only be accessible within the country, I doubt many people will use it for the simple reason that it hardly competes with the telly. It would be great if this were made available to punters all over the world but the usually thorny issues relating to content rights covering multiple countries have presumably scuppered any such plans. (Don't Setanta hold the rights to the live matches abroad?)
On the football side, it looks as if the same crew are back again fronting the action. Smirking Michael Lyster will do the honours for the live matches, aided and abetted by the pair described last year by the Spailpin as the Podge and Rodge of Gaelic football analysis, Messrs Brolly and O’Rourke. Pett Spillane will once again continue his Gary Lineker role of presenting the Sunday night highlights show. I like old Pett, I have to admit. (You'd have to, with such memorable lines as "I call a tug a tug" and "jiyn us afther the break"). He used to be a complete and utter tool as an analyst but his highly opinionated style works well as a presenter, as he’s always able to provoke the panellists into saying something that’s worth listening to. He could, however, do with a few livelier guys on the panel: for example, has anyone checked Anthony Tohill's pulse recently?
In terms of Mayo’s matches, the position is clear – if we proceed via the front door, all our matches will be shown live. If we are forced to take the scenic route, they might be shown but it depends on who we get drawn against. We should still aim to take the direct route, even if it means having to put up with the considered opinions of that obnoxious eejit Brolly. O’Rourke I don’t mind, especially since he said those famous words in the aftermath of our victory over the Dubs last year. Play it again Colm: “if I live to be a hundred, I don’t think I’ll ever see a game as good as this one”. Ahhhh! More of the same this year, only this time in September with Kerry finally put to the sword.
Finally, with my thanks Tom’s Sporting Almanac, here’s a selection, from the Irish Slang Top Ten, of some appropriate jollities with which to impress your new lady friend when you take her along to see some of the live action over the course of the coming season. Up the yard Harry and bull that cow!
