There’s clearly no point in trying to come to even interim conclusions about the new GAA football season design, currently being trialled in its first iteration since being approved at last year’s annual congress in Bekan.
Encroachment of the league into championship space is so complete that it could be taken to Bórd Pleanála but what will be the effect of that on the season? Already it has impacted on divisional winners from the weekend’s league finals.
Mayo are seen as the guinea pigs in this with the biggest match of the weekend, against Roscommon, in the offing but there are others. Sligo go to London a week after their Division Four win whereas Wicklow will have had a break of eight days between that final and Sunday’s hosting of Carlow.
Given that they are travelling to the home of the new league winners, just two weeks after their previous match, Roscommon are probably in this conversation as well even if their fortnight’s break looks as comparatively invigorating as a Caribbean holiday.
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At the moment the Central Competitions Control Committee are saying nothing but presumably the ambient sense is ‘smug’. Having proposed the innovation of making those counties who finish on top of the four respective tables the title winners, CCCC watched as Central Council decided to retain the old system with its inconvenient finals.
The calendar gain might have been just a week but it would have loosened the gridlock.
Will Mayo ultimately be glad that they won the league? The answer to that remains to emerge but next Sunday’s outcome will have a major bearing. The strong signals from the county are that the momentum of winning outweighs the benefit of a better spaced schedule.
For all the querying of the county’s priorities, maybe the more obvious question is would they ultimately be happier to win the league than to take the Connacht title?
The first is a national trophy they have won three times in 50 years and the other is a local distinction, the lack of which didn’t stop them from twice coming closer to an All-Ireland than they managed this century.
The biggest question of all may be the extent to which the provincial championships can survive the G-force of a Mach 10 fixtures schedule? The problem with the recast function of the provinces is that success no longer guarantees sufficient reward to make it desirable.
It is purely the Mayo motivation of winning for the sake of it that justifies the effort. Kevin McStay has always been adamant that winning your province gives you a first seeding in the All-Ireland round robin whereas the alternative in the lopsided draw in Connacht is third seeding but being provincial champions gets a team no farther than the 12 lower seeds progress anyway.
Lack of jeopardy is going to arise from the elevation of the provincial finalists to second seeds. A cursory glance through the provincial draws shows that the third seeds are more likely to be the problem – the pot into which you don’t want to stick your hand for fear of the scorpions.
It is guaranteed that four Division One teams will be waiting in that third pot while half of the provincial finalists are certain to be from outside the top flight.
Luck of the draw may play a role in years to come but this year there is not alone little practical incentive to win your province but a complete lack of jeopardy in not doing so – unless a team like Mayo is keen to keep winning.
Combine all of this with a fixture schedule which allows as much space for recovery and strategy as speed dating and it may occur to teams that the alternative suits them better.
There is a strong belief that the calendar will be afforded a bit more space but any additional weeks will by hard won. It’s not a simple click of the fingers.
One of the big questions that CCCC have to bear in mind is player welfare. A key influence on the split season was the 2018 ESRI report, which detailed the spiralling demands on intercounty players.
Among its findings was that players and footballers in particular took serious issue with the training-to-matches ratio. Three periods during the year were surveyed and only one didn’t provoke dissatisfaction.
This started at 59 per cent in the preseason and dropped during the course of the national league – when there are plenty of fixtures – to 37 per cent but in the championship months, spiked at 74 per cent – and 80 per cent amongst footballers.
Every additional week given to the intercounty fixtures calendar comes with further incursions from training demands. Sketching in that extra space for the intercounty calendar will not be done on a blank sheet of paper.
When CCCC sit down to review the season some time after the end of July, there will be plenty of issues demanding attention and more importantly some vital data from the months ahead.
Many questions in need of answers.
