GAA facing backlash over new format

AS we approach the business end of the GAA football championship, almost all the counties competing now know who they will be playing over the next couple of months.
Both competitions, the Sam Maguire and the Tailltean Cup, are promising some epic battles and much to look forward to. However, most of the talk since the draws were made last Tuesday has focused on the format itself rather than the big match-ups due to take place.
RTÉ GAA pundits Seán Kavanagh and our own Cora Staunton summed up the situation well on The Sunday Game, when they expressed concern over the possible lack of a cutting-edge to the championship due to the number of teams who will progress out of the round-robin stage.
Only four teams will be eliminated after that stage, and since the draw it does look like some teams are going to struggle to be competitive.
“You look at those groups and within a fair degree of knowledge, you know the four teams that are going out right now,” Kavanagh said. “But there’s going to be another five or six weeks of football. A big team could lose two games and still end up going onto win Sam. It’s too long. There’s so much wrong with the structure right now.”
For Staunton, the decision to allow three teams to progress is the wrong call.
“There’s a lot of football and we’re still not really getting anywhere,” she said. “There’s not going to be too many games that are crucial because three teams go through.
“Is that the right call? Probably not. Why couldn’t it have been two teams from each group and have a little bit more bite in each group and straight through to a quarter-final?”
It’s hard to disagree with Cora, as the current structure does seem heavily weighted towards the stronger teams. There is every chance that there will be some very one-sided clashes under the new format.
Mayo make the trip to Killarney for their first game on May 20. Kevin McStay would love to turn over the current All-Ireland champions and aim for top spot in the group. But the reality is that he may also look at the bigger picture. A defeat to Kerry would not be the end of the world, with other games against Louth and Cork to target for progession into the knockout stages.
Any players who are carrying knocks are unlikely to be risked, and it is fair to assume that there will be a lot of shadow boxing going on during the games in the round-robin phase.
With the format being so drawn out, fans may choose also not to travel to a lot of these games – and we saw relatively poor crowds at both the Connacht and Munster football finals at the weekend.
So there is a lot to ponder for the decision makers in the GAA over the next few months.
However, things will not be changed in the short-term. After next Sunday’s Leinster and Ulster finals, all the teams will know there fixtures and set about trying to progress to those preliminary quarter-finals. These are down to take place on the weekend of June 24 and 25, with the quarter finals down for the decision the following weekend on July 1 and 2.
Here in Mayo, we are all hoping that Mayo can progress to that stage of the competition, at the very least.