GPA proposes round-robin All-Ireland championship

THE GPA has proposed a radical shake-up of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship that would see a round-robin series introduced. The players’ body yesterday released its masterplan for a revamp of both the provincial and All-Ireland competitions. However, under the proposals, there are no immediate plans to introduce a second-tier championship. Instead, all 32 teams involved – New York are excluded – would be entered into an All-Ireland competition that is played separately from the provincial competitions. Their only bow towards the idea of a second-tier championship – which many, including Jim McGuinness, have recently called for – is that the “option for a stand-alone competition for 8 eliminated teams to be researched further.” There have been calls in recent years for the introduction of a ‘Champions League style’ format for the Championship, and that is the line the GPA has gone down. The “8 eliminated teams” refers to those who would exit the Championship after the round-robin series. The GPA proposal puts forward that three of the four teams from each group should progress to a last-24 round. The group winners would go straight into the last 16, with the 16 teams finishing in second and third across the groups playing off for their place in the last 16. Under the proposals, the provincial Championships would be run off in just four weeks. Their proposed calendar for 2016 would see all of the provincial competitions begin on April 2 and finish up on the weekend of April 30 – May 1. The provincial competitions have long been blamed for the ills of club competitions. This year’s Ulster Championship, which consists of eight games, will have taken nine weeks to complete by the time Donegal and Monaghan’s clash finishes on Sunday week. The power to structure the provincial championships “as they see fit” would remain with the four respective provincial bodies. But with greater emphasis placed on the National League, whereby seeding for the All-Ireland series would be determined by finishing positions in the League, the proposals could sound the death knell for a provincial series that has backboned the Association’s blue riband competition since its beginning. And the GPA’s move to alleviate the pressure on a squashed calendar appears to be instantly undone by instead loading it with 48 round-robin games for the All-Ireland series. In total, the number of championship games in a season would rise from 64 to 91. The proposed new calendar wouldn’t see the All-Ireland reach the quarter-final stage until the August Bank Holiday weekend – the same weekend as the quarter-finals start under the current system. The All-Ireland final would be brought forward by two weeks, away from its traditional slot on the third Sunday of September. The GPA says that, if implemented, the proposed calendar would “result in fewer Inter-County Championship weekends, freeing up more club weekends”.