The Need for Change in the GAA?

It's been a while, but something has become a huge talking point recently and it needs to be looked at. There have been a number of calls for changes to the way in which the All-Ireland Championship is contested. Seán Moran, writing in The Irish Times, claimed that the GAA is "imprisoned" by its desire to maintain its traditional structures, and claimed that this would limit the potential success that any restructuring could bring. Martin McHugh claimed that the qualifier system was only helping the stronger counties and that it wasn't making the GAA money anymore. Colm O'Rourke claimed that the provincial structures in place at the moment actually stifle the weaker teams and continued on to say that he hopes that a "Champions League-type system" will come to fruition. Some within the GPA also want the provincial championship gotten rid of, and they echo Colm O'Rourke's call for a Champions League format. Pat Spillane claimed that the backdoor system means that one off victories aren't as damaging for big teams as they used to be because the qualifiers allow teams to have a second chance. Is all of this true? Is the GAA living in the past by persisting with provincial championships, or will changes continue to favour the stronger counties?

Firstly, one issue which must be nipped in the bud is the idea that the GAA needs to make changes because the bigger counties are handing out heavy defeats to the weaker counties. This has been a consistent theme of the GAA for generations, except in Ulster where the provincial championship has been consistently competitive and victories have been spread out amongst eight of the nine counties. In Connacht, Mayo and Galway have accounted for twenty nine of the last forty championships. In Leinster, Dublin and Meath have accounted for thirty two of the last forty championships, including this year. In Munster, the dominance of the big two is even worse with Clare's victory in 1992 being the only time Cork or Kerry hasn't won the Munster Championship since 1935. As such, anyone suggesting that this year it has now become too serious for the GAA to even hesitate on change for a second is either misinformed or highly disingenuous!

Now the question as to why change is needed must be addressed. The implication from O'Rourke, McStay and McHugh is that changing the football championship into four groups of eight or eight groups of four will eventually make the weaker counties better. It is a highly questionable hypothesis to propagate. Assuming the draws are seeded according to league position, we could end up with groups consisting of: 1. Dublin, Louth, Sligo and Clare, 2. Kerry, Laois, Roscommon and Carlow, 3. Mayo, Longford, Antrim and Waterford, 4. Cork, Wexford, Wicklow and Leitrim. Are these groups, or groupings like them, likely to bring in supporters? Are they likely to give the weaker counties a chance of beating the bigger teams?

O'Rourke's claim that the weaker teams are being stifled by the provincial championships doesn't really hold true either. London are in the Connacht Final for the first time ever, while Monaghan will contest the Ulster  Final when Armagh were the strongest team on that side of the draw, according to the League. Recently, Wexford have been unlucky not to defeat Dublin (who went on to will the All-Ireland that year) in the 2011 Leinster Final, Limerick came very close to defeating Kerry in the Munster Final of 2010 while Sligo, who this year lost to London, were only two points off Mayo in the Connacht Final last year. What's that I hear you say? The stronger teams won and the weaker teams lost? Yes, but the games were competitive. They weren't boring affairs that would stop any GAA fan from attending or watching matches on TV. They were certainly more interesting than the promise offered by a Dublin v Sligo game in the new "GAA Champions League."

Spillane's point about the bigger teams having a second chance is true enough, but the qualifiers were designed not only to bring the cream to the top, but also to give weaker counties more Championship games in the summer. As such, the backdoor system has been a huge success. In the last thirteen years, since the introduction of the qualifiers, we have had seven different counties claiming All-Ireland success. While it would be nice to have thirteen different winners, it's not a realistic expectation for anyone to have. In the same period, the Champions League has seen ten different winners, while the Heineken Cup in rugby has seen seven winners.

On top of that, any group stage format that would follow the Champions League model would allow the top teams a second chance if they were to be beaten by one of the weaker teams. It would also mean that the one off victory that a weaker team might secure would then have to be followed up by at least one more victory to guarantee them progression out of the group. Hence, the cream would rise to the top, in the same way it does now.

The current system has also allowed more than just the expected teams to do well in the Championship.  Kildare, Down, Wexford, Derry, and Fermanagh have made All-Ireland Semi-Final appearances, as well as Meath, Galway and Armagh. I haven't included any of the big six (Dublin, Kerry, Cork, Tyrone, Donegal, Mayo) in that group, but when you include them, that's fourteen different semi-finalists in thirteen years. That, to me, is a fairly competitive competition by any stretch of the imagination.

While there might be an argument for some form of change, even if it is to simply have Kerry and Cork handing out thrashings each year to a weaker team from a different province rather than from Munster, any change must be considered very carefully. What the GAA has now is a traditional Championship, with a basic structure that is older than the state we live in, and has remained consistently popular through the nearly 130 years of the GAA's existence. While victories for the weaker counties are rare, they still do occur. Great rivalries exist within the provinces, and moving teams around might mean we don't see Dublin play Meath or Galway play Mayo for many years. The Dublin hurlers have shown that it is possible for a team to come from more or less nowhere a decade ago, to being a realistic contender for an All-Ireland Final place now, without a huge Championship revamp having to take place. The GAA should not throw away what it has without proper consultation across the board.