FR Ted’s hammer is back out at the car that is the All-Ireland football championships.
The qualifiers were introduced in 2001 and stayed around for a good while before the GAA started really tapping on the bonnet.
The current structure is the sixth different iteration of the football championship since 2017.
You had the original qualifier system then the Super 8s, followed by two years of straight knockout because of Covid, then back to something like the original qualifiers only with four rounds becoming two and the introduction of the Tailteann Cup.
And then in 2023, we moved to another new way of doing things with the introduction of a round robin stage that looked suspiciously like the Super 8s packaged in a shinier box.
Does the current system push the dent out or do we need to keep tapping?
The intention on the GAA’s part is to do the latter.
CCCC has provided a discussion document to counties that outlines six potential options for reforming the football championship.
Of the six, the fixture body’s recommendation is that counties most strongly consider the first two.
That is to say that unless counties return with overwhelming support for one of them, they won’t be seriously considered.
We’ll examine the two primary ideas in detail in a minute but best to throw the other four non-runners out first.
One idea of introducing a third tier is not a bad idea in itself, undermined by a soft approach to how it would be split up. Instead of splitting the 33 teams evenly three ways, it proposes to remain with 16 teams in Sam Maguire and split the other 17 into eight teams in Tier Two and nine in Tier Three.
There’s a proposal to go back to straight knockout after the provincial championships, which is effectively just the pre-2018 qualifier system again.
Then you have an idea to split the provincial championships into two competitions, effectively A and B championships, with teams that qualify for the top 16 in one and the rest in the other.
But, as the document points out, that is almost completely unworkable. Seven Ulster teams would qualify for their ‘A’ championship and in a lot of years that would be eight.
It also notes that it’s not unconceivable that Kerry could be the only Tier One team from Munster.
It’s just not a feasible idea.
The last non-runner, buried at number six, pokes at the elephant in the room without asking it to leave.
Move the provincial championships to the start of the year, followed by the leagues and then a round-robin or similar All-Ireland championship.
It’s fair to say that CCCC are not in favour. Unlike the others, it comes with a ream of negatives attached.
The idea of removing the link between provincials and the All-Ireland series is briefly explored but not in a positive sense, quoting instead from the 2019 Fixture Task Force report that highlights the wish of counties to retain them as a serious championship.
There would be opposition but anything other than dealing with the provincial problem head-on is just moving deck chairs around the Titanic.
Neither of the two options that CCCC wish counties to consider in the most depth do that.
Option One is to reintroduce qualifiers after the provincial championships, except to introduce a back door to those qualifiers.
Teams that lose their first qualifier would get another chance.
The document circulated to counties argues that it increases jeopardy, ensuring that every championship game matters, but it’s weaker in that sense than what we had between 2001 and 2017 with the old qualifier system that people were mad to get rid of.
It’s hard to believe that of all the potential solutions, the CCCC have recommended that counties seriously consider Option Two.
It would bring you to mind of Logan Roy in Succession telling his children: “I love you, but you are not serious people.”
Option Two proposes that the increased reward for winning your provincial championship would be straight passage to the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
Grand if everyone else didn’t get busy for a month in between playing in a round robin while the provincial champions sit idle.
The other 12 teams in the Sam Maguire would be split into three groups of four.
The document does address this problem, indicating that the Connacht and Munster champions would have no game for five weeks and it would be four weeks for the winners in Ulster and Leinster.
Yet that isn’t enough to actually stop them from going ahead and recommending that counties give this idea their most serious consideration.
Let’s just boil that down into reality. Take Donegal. If that proposed system was in play this year, they would have won Ulster on May 12 and not played again until June 22, when they’d have walked cold into a knockout All-Ireland quarter-final against a team that’s had three games since.
If that’s a reward, you wouldn’t want to see what a punishment looks like.
The whole idea of changing the championship structure is well-intended but it goes back to the same question as every time they do it: is what we’re introducing better than what we have?
The two serious options on the table really are not.
As with most boardroom activity, there’s a natural disassociation. Players aren’t going to print these proposals out, sit down at the kitchen table and take into the minutiae of it.
The realities of it will only grip them when they’re two days after winning a provincial title and realise they’ve the next four-and-a-half weeks in the middle of the summer to fill without a game.
There is a real danger that document takes Ted’s hammer to the car.
The dent in the championship is small but you can live with it.
There’s not one of the ideas on paper that you look at and think will make it better.
Unless that changes, the championship shouldn’t.