Seán Moran: Lack of competition a stark threat to championship formats, no matter how successful they look

The old ways had at least the virtue of clarity. Win and you had another match, albeit in a frequently indeterminate number of weeks. Lose and your time was your own. The binary nature of this championship involvement was just accepted.

In the ongoing arm wrestle between form and substance in GAA competitions, those days were year zero, matches full of substance starkly set in a primitive and unforgiving format.

These days the pendulum has swung hard in the other direction with football fixtures proliferating in new formats but substance harder to detect until the later stages.

All amid concerns that the provincial championships in Munster and Leinster have broken down for want of competition.

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Previously believed to be in their favour was the huge lift counties could muster by qualifying for a provincial final or picking up a rare victory.

Clare’s 1992 Munster title was still being memorialised last weekend when the current team was putting up a gallant but unavailing fight against Kerry. Leitrim’s Connacht championship two years later celebrates its 30th anniversary.

The problem with the ‘promotion’ argument now is that the GAA have already revised that determination

Tipperary footballers on an eerie weekend in the winter of 2020 during Covid marked the centenary of Bloody Sunday by winning Munster, as the exact four provincial champions from 1920 – and for the first time since – regained the titles.

So much for that romance. This Sunday, Louth will contest a second successive Leinster final for the first time since the 1950s but the mood in the county is far from uplifted.

According to Dan Bannon of the LouthandProud podcast, going out on Wednesday, there is little excitement at the prospect of taking on a Dublin team in pursuit of a 14th successive title and who beat them by 21 points last year.

Instead, attention is wandering to the All-Ireland group draws, which were made last week and – to the unhappiness of team managers in general – the subject of most conversations to the virtual exclusion locally of how Louth were in another Leinster final.

Not surprisingly, the more pressing thought for people in the county is the All-Ireland opening weekend’s meeting with neighbours Meath, a match seen as contestable, even winnable, and which could propel the county deeper into the championship.

One of the big arguments against the current split season is the speed of its completion. Teams’ feet are scarcely touching the ground as they get swept away by fixtures in full spate.

Entire schedules are disposed of in a matter of weeks. Promotion and anticipation levels inevitably suffer.

That is, of course, ironic, as the whole rationale behind expanding the championship was to improve promotion and marketing opportunities. When pure knockout was first diluted by hurling’s back door in 1997, one of the stated objectives was to provide two stand-alone All-Ireland semi-finals (instead of the then double bill) so that the game would have the marketing opportunity of two big days.

The problem with the “promotion” argument now is that the GAA have already revised that determination.

As far back as when former director general Páraic Duffy changed his mind on the balance of advantage between continuing to adhere to the traditional calendar with its September All-Irelands and the need to address the club fixtures crisis, it was clear that the GAA had come to the conclusion that they needed to reduce the intercounty footprint.

Form can govern substance – matches whizzing by on a hurried schedule are not easily promoted – but the reverse also applies. The structures currently in place are in their fifth year and have worked well. Both provinces have enjoyed successful hurling championships, Munster more obviously with record attendances and savagely contested matches.

There is though a question mark over the sustainability of the format should competitive tension slacken.

To date, in the fifth iteration of the provincial round robins, only two counties have managed a flawless group record, Galway in 2018 and Tipperary in 2019. Tipp went on to win the All-Ireland but over the speed bump of a Munster final annihilation by Limerick.

The champions Limerick have started extremely well, beating both of the teams that took points from them last year, Clare and Tipperary and the champions are odds-on to emulate that 100 per cent record.

The format needs four contenders in Munster or there is no competition. So far that has been the case but any slippage and the opulent gate receipts would soon be undermined.

Leinster is a different type of competition with Galway being brought in to add depth to the provincial championship and provide competition for Kilkenny. It has yielded three Leinster titles for the western county and one All-Ireland but Kilkenny have still won two out of every three provincial titles since Galway’s arrival.

[ Seán Moran: If you think this season needs an overhaul, take a glance backwards ]

The province has been further tweaked by adding a sixth team, a second development county, in order to create jeopardy around relegation to the McDonagh Cup, an understandable idea but one that reduces the already sparse number of box-office fixtures.

The province’s brand leaders, Galway and Kilkenny drew fewer than 10,000 to Salthill the week before last, a reflection of the understrength Kilkenny team, which travelled, and declining confidence in the home county – grimly vindicated a week later in Wexford.

The round robin has helped counties to be competitive by providing home fixtures instead of a rotation of neutral venues, especially in Munster.

The problem is that whereas form is an enhancing substance in one province, in Leinster it’s the other way around and substance or lack of it is undermining the format and raising the spectre of tightening belts.