Timmy O'Keeffe wants changes to Football Championship

I see Timmy O’Keeffe has called for a radical change to the All-Ireland football championship in the wake of Waterford’s embarrassing 17-point defeat to Cork in the Munster semi-final last weekend. O’Keeffe has called for the football championship to be altered in such a way as to compare with the All-Ireland hurling championship whereby only a limited number of team compete for the Liam McCarthy Cup. O’Keeffe has hinted that the GAA should consider introducing a secondary competition along the lines of Hurling’s Christy Ring or Lory Meagher Cups for the weaker counties. He also went on to say that there would be promotion and relegation from the Sam Maguire competition to this new lower tier competition.

Since O’Keeffe’s comments appeared in today’s edition of the Irish Independent, Internet web forums have been awash with comment about this issue, with a mixture of comments both in favour and against O’Keeffe’s proposal.

One aspect of O’Keeffe’s idea which makes perfect, logical sense is where he states that this is the only GAA competition where the strongest teams and the weakest teams can meet each other. He points to the club championship where Junior teams and Senior teams do not play against each other, so why should All-Ireland champions like Cork play against relatively weak teams like Waterford.

There is probably a lot of merit in O’Keeffe’s idea but the GAA must be extremely cautious when attempting to introduce a secondary competition for weaker counties. When the Tommy Murphy Cup was introduced some years ago, there was not a lot of interest in it from the weaker counties, even though there was a Croke Park final up for grabs. However, the fact that the winner of this new competition would be promoted should arouse interest in all those counties who are eligible to participate.

Although I have gone on record to say that I am not in favour of the seeded draw in the Munster championship, I also tend to agree with Timmy’s idea here. As for the seeded draw argument – if teams are in the same championship, we should not attempt to say who is weaker and who is stronger. After all, the task of finding out the strongest team in a competition should be done between the white lines and not in a Munster Council boardroom.

If Waterford are not to compete in the All-Ireland series, then it would probably be a good idea if they were to play in a competition against teams of their own calibre. Perhaps, the GAA could call it the All-Ireland Intermediate championship with the winners getting promoted to play in the All-Ireland senior championship the following year.

Of course, there would be several stumbling blocks to bring through such a major revamp of the football championship. At congress, most counties are represented by a conservative bunch who will vote for the status quo, no matter what. Any change such as this would require a two-thirds majority and in the past, this has sounded the death-knell of many a good idea.

Another major hurdle to changing the current format of the Championship, would be what would come of the Provincial championship. Again, there are oodles of traditionalists in every county, who would rather cut off their right arm than get rid of the provincial Championships even if there would be a tangible benefit to the future of the game.