Top GAA official calls for automatic access to All-Ireland quarter-finals for provincial winners

Provincial football champions should be given direct entry to All-Ireland quarter-finals, according to one of the GAA’s most senior officials.

Connacht CEO John Prenty is also one of the most experienced in terms of scheduling fixtures, and he strongly believes that giving this advantage to provincial winners would improve the incentive to win the championships.

A member of the influential Fixtures Calendar Review Task Force (FCRTF), which produced a range of options for reform of the intercounty calendar, leading to the split season and the current championship structure, Prenty was reflecting on the evidence of the first year of the current structure.

He accepts that there won’t be big changes next year but expressed the hope that when the championships were being finalised, there would be greater incentives for the winners of Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster.

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“The provincial champions have got to get some leeway. When we come back to review it properly, maybe the provincial winners will go straight to the All-Ireland quarter-finals and the other teams will play off in groups – in other words, a three-way play-off rather than a four-way play-off.”

At present, the structure sees provincial champions, finalists and the next eight counties ranked according to league position seeded into four pots and distributed to four groups of four for the group stages of the Sam Maguire.

Although the four provincial champions are top seeds in this process, they get no other advantage. Already this year, questions were being asked about the incentive to win these titles, with Armagh coach Ciarán McKeever articulating the position before the Ulster championship had even started.

“The way the whole season is crammed in now, it looks like this is the beginning of the end of the Ulster championship the way it’s all going,” he said.

“We will be going out to try and compete to win every match but we are under no illusion – our main priority is the super 16s. That’s when the real football starts.”

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Under Prenty’s proposal, the four provincial winners would proceed straight to the quarter-finals and skip the whole group stage, leaving it to three-team groups, which would produce a top two who would be drawn against each other in the preliminary quarter-finals.

Those winners would be drawn against the provincial champions.

“There needs to be a major benefit to winning the provincial championships,” according to the Connacht CEO. “This would provide it and also save a couple of weeks by starting the round robin the weekend of the provincial finals.

“I think it might have become easier not to win the province and I think there should be a reward to redress that balance. This would be similar to the reward for the Munster and Leinster hurling championships where the winners get a significant advantage heading into the All-Ireland series by getting a longer break before the semi-finals.”

In hurling, the winners of the two provincial championships proceed to the semi-finals whereas the runners-up and teams placed third in the respective provincial championships, together with the McDonagh Cup (Tier 2) finalists, play out a preliminary quarter-final and quarter-final.

The four-week break for the provincial finalists has been seen as a big advantage going into the semi-final, as it allows full recovery from what can be gruelling Munster and Leinster campaigns and finals.

Prenty had every reason to focus on the lack of reward for provincial champions as Connacht’s standard-bearers this year, Galway, were the only winners not to advance to the All-Ireland quarter-finals, having failed to top their group – losing first place to Armagh after a one-point defeat – and as a result having to play a preliminary All-Ireland quarter-final, which they lost at home to neighbours Mayo.

“In Connacht, Galway and Mayo found themselves in the preliminary quarter-finals and ended up playing each other. As a result there was no benefit for Galway winning their provincial championship. To me it would always be important to win that but this advantage would add to that importance.”

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The Connacht CEO also reiterated his recent comments that the province would review the presence of New York in their provincial championship in three years’ time after the current rotation is complete with the visits of Mayo, Galway and Roscommon to the US.

He did suggest that in the light of rising costs – Leitrim had a bill of €220,000 for their travel in April when becoming the first county to lose a Connacht championship match in New York – Croke Park might add to the provincial subvention of €50,000.

The review will have to take into account the drain on resources for smaller counties such as Sligo and Leitrim.

“We became twinned with New York and they entered the Connacht championship. Initially, they travelled here to play their matches and did so for three years.”

Ironically, the big three in Connacht, Mayo, Galway and Roscommon all had home advantage for the first three years, 1999-2001, before Sligo and Leitrim travelled across the Atlantic to Gaelic Park in 2002 and 2003.

Were New York’s participation in the Connacht championship to be discontinued, their involvement would switch as it did this year to the Tier 2 Tailteann Cup in which they have a guaranteed progress to the preliminary quarter-finals – on the basis that having to play three round-robin matches in Ireland would be unsustainable.

This year, New York, having lost the Connacht semi-final to Sligo, returned to face Carlow in the Tailteann preliminary quarter-final, which they lost by five points.