Monday 26 May 2008

Scrap the Munster football championship

The latest offerings from the Munster football championship only hardens the case to scrap it.
Yesterday the footballers of the four hurling counties Limerick, Tipp, Waterford and Clare served up two very poor games and showed once again that outside of Kerry and Cork there is no football championship worth talking about in our most southern province.
This gives the Rebels and the Kingdom a huge advantage in the All-Ireland championship.
No one else in the country has the luxury of preparing for one game in their provincial championship while happily getting on with the task of training for the All Ireland.
In Leinster, despite the poor standard of football on offer the championship remains competitive, and even in Connacht Galway and Mayo usually have to work a bit to beat Sligo or Roscommon.
In Ulster they knock forty bells out of each other over the three games and although Tyrone and Armagh have come out on top in recent seasons no one would bet against Derry or Donegal being real contenders.
All these sides have to come to two peaks in a season, one in their provincial championship and again for the All-Ireland series.
In the meantime Cork and Kerry can work on speed and conditioning and play challenge games aimed at peaking late July, early August.
This football championship is as distorted as the Munster hurling championship, which works against the south's finest.
It is long past time to scrap the provincial championships in football as they are now an anachronism, and the sooner we get to an Open Draw the better, fair play demands it.

2 comments:

ronanmul said...

Hear, hear!

Put Kerry in the Ulster Championship and let's see how they fare in the first round.

How can change be brought about though when the Provincial Boards are so powerful in GAA?

Sean Mag Uidhir said...

Ronan,

Would love to see Kerry make their way through the Ulster championship and if they got through what shape they would be in for the latter stages of the All Ireland.

The current system is not sustainable and the increased TV exposure has stripped away the mystique surrounding some of the provincial championships where you would see a better club game than some of what's on offer.