We are still a few weeks away from the commencement of the Losers’ Group section of the All-Ireland football championship and already the flaws in the system are beginning to show…

Two weeks ago no-hopers Tipperary and Waterford were blown away by Kerry and Cork in the first round of the Munster championship. The situation with Waterford is particularly worth looking at. In recent years there has been a very good underage football set-up in the county, with the result that quite competitive teams have been put on the field. Last year, they probably should have won the Munster under-21 title, but apparently didn’t take Limerick seriously enough in the final having put out Kerry the previous week. This year, once again, the minors have come through the round-robin series for ‘weaker’ counties and now go into the semi-final against the Kingdom with four good games under their belt.

The problem is, few of these good young players appear to be interested in making the transition to senior level. While some have either just dropped out or opted for hurling, others simply couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort in training when all that awaited them at the end of it all was a hiding from Cork. Of course, they do have a second chance in the losers’ group, but after last weekend’s results they could easily find themselves up against Donegal or Armagh. Even with home advantage, such a draw would inevitably mean another pounding for the Déise.

Ultimately, then, the problem with the senior football championship – even with the revised structures – is that it offers few prospects of reasonable progress for the weaker counties and no prospects whatever of eventual victory. For An Moltóir, there is little point in a competition which gives half the entrants no hope at all of winning out. Returning to the case of Waterford, there was some speculation in the press that their junior football team was better than the seniors, and contained many of the players who won All-Ireland honours at this level two years ago. Yet it appears that the Waterford County Board refused to pay expenses for players attending training with the junior squad, with the result that the team went in against Cork hopelessly unprepared and got their just desserts. It does seem cockeyed that no money was put into a team which had some prospect of success, with all the resources going into the no-hopers!

The plain fact is that Waterford have no business playing in the senior football championship. They should withdraw from it entirely next year, and put all their efforts into the junior championship.. Of course, this can only be a stopgap measure, since if they were to win the competition out, the players would have no option to either go up to the senior grade the following year, or drop out of intercounty competition altogether.

In the end of the day, if the GAA is interested in helping the weaker football counties, they should have a separate senior competition from them. An Moltóir is not speaking here of the ill-begotten "B" championship, tacked on as an afterthought in the Autumn with few eligible counties actually taking part. Instead, it should be played off in tandem with the main senior competition and given the full media treatment by the Association and its sponsors.

This, of course, would require the abolition of the provincial championships (or their separation from the All-Ireland competition). What An Moltóir has in mind is a premier championship involving the top sixteen counties, and an intermediate championship involving the other sixteen counties. Some provision would also have to be made for involving London and New York, but for the moment we will confine our attentions to the thirty-two ‘mainland’ counties. Each competition would involve four groups of four counties each who would be played off in a round-robin system, with the top two in each group qualifying for the All-Ireland quarter finals. The winners of the intermediate championship would be promoted to the premiership, to be replaced by the ultimate losers of a relegation playoff involving the last counties in each of the premiership groupings.

This proposal provides for two serious and substantial All-Ireland competitions in which most counties have some prospect of ultimate success when starting out. More importantly, no county would have to face seriously superior opposition and the prospect of a hiding. This would give players in the weaker counties a much better incentive to put in the effort than prevails at the moment. Of course, the traditionalists and the redundant provincial establishments would fight tooth and nail against the proposed structures, but ultimately the GAA is going to have to face up to the fact that the provincial system and straight knock-out championships do not serve the broader interests of Gaelic football.

Some system would have to be devised for deciding which counties would go into the premier and intermediate championships. A complicated but fair system would be to sort out the teams over a two-year period via the National Football League. In the first year, the thirty-two counties would be divided at random into four divisions with the teams in each division playing off against each other as in the regular football league. The top four teams in each group would be randomly allocated to two first division groupings, with the other 16 counties divided into two second division groups. The following year, the four groups would again play off in a league system. The top six counties in each of the first division groups would automatically qualify for the premiership, with the bottom two teams playing off against the top two teams in each of the second division groups, with the four winners also qualifying for the premiership. This would certainly give the National Football League a bit of an edge for a couple of years. What would happen to the League thereafter is a matter for another day.

Alternatively, the thirty two counties could be sorted out by some sort of select committee. If An Moltóir was on this committee, he would be proposing the following counties for the premiership: Galway, Mayo, Cork, Kerry, Armagh, Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Fermanagh, Dublin, Kildare, Offaly, Meath, Westmeath and a toss-up between Roscommon, Sligo, Down and Louth for the remaining two places. This would leave the following in the intermediate championship: Clare, Tipperary, Limerick, Waterford, Leitrim, Antrim, Cavan, Monaghan, Longford, Carlow, Wicklow, Wexford, Laois, Kilkenny and the losers of the above toss-up.

An Moltóir is sure that this selection will get up some readers’ noses but, shure, you can’t please everybody all of the time…