GAELIC GAMES: KEITH DUGGANwonders whether, 10 years on, they are beginning to lose their impact. For all of the wonder stories, none of the weaker counties have yet made the ultimate breakthrough

IT WAS one of the boldest plans in the history of the GAA. In 1999, a group tasked with finding a new and exciting way of devising a football championship which would end the punitive knock-out system came up with a plan that was, in retrospect, so good it was ahead of its time.

The idea was to split the football map into two “conferences” based on 11 teams from Connacht-Ulster and 11 teams from Munster-Leinster.

A third tier would consist of those weaker teams outside those elite 22. Teams would play one another on a round-robin basis and those with the best record would get to compete for the traditional provincial championships before going into the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

In addition, two quarter-final places would be reserved for teams from the weaker counties. The radical change was the All-Ireland championship would run from March through to September. There would be no league.

The reaction from the county boards was the direct opposite to what those behind the idea expected. The strong counties, who had theoretically most to lose, fully supported the idea.

But those counties who for decades had been labouring fruitlessly under the old knock-out system were suspicious of it. It was easily defeated in Congress in 2000.

A compromise was drawn up and the football qualifying system, which will enter its 10th year when this year’s championship kicks off next weekend, was the result.

“Well, we felt ours was better but it didn’t get the support,” reflects Noel Walsh, the Clare man who was chairman of that 1999 Football Development Committee.

“There was a lot of opposition, particularly from the provincial councils, who felt threatened by the idea. So the qualifiers were the next best thing. People said afterwards that it was just the wrong time for a proposal like that. If we introduced it now, we might get a different reception.

“It is like the opening of Croke Park – I was involved with that too and if Seán Kelly hadn’t been president and driven it, it wouldn’t have passed.

“You need that kind of momentum when you have the kind of opposition we faced. But I do think that the system that has been introduced since, while not perfect, has been pretty good.”

The 10 years of the qualifying system have slowly diluted the memory of the old knock-out system, in which the shocks were seldom but, when they did happen, deeply felt. 2000, the last year of the old system was proof of that: Meath, the reigning All-Ireland champions played Offaly in Croke Park on June 4th and lost by 0-13 to 0-9.

Just like that, they were out.

The general shock was best summed up by Meath’s full back, Darren Fay. “I’ve never felt anything like it. I am just totally dejected at this point in time.”

A year later, Galway demonstrated just how completely the second-chance qualifying system had changed the landscape.

All-Ireland champions in 1998 and having lost a thrilling All-Ireland final and replay against Kerry in 2000, Galway were ambushed by Roscommon in Tuam Stadium on June 4th and lost by 2-12 to 0-14. The qualifiers were such a vague concept that day – a single game had yet to be played – that most Galway people only half-believed that they were not out of the championship.

“We had some great years in the Connacht championship over the last three or four years but this wasn’t one of them,” John O’Mahony, the Galway manager said. “Just a bad day at the office.”

But that September, they won the All-Ireland in exuberant fashion, cantering home in the final against Meath. The quality of their game seemed to improve through each qualifying match and their run also illustrated the first fundamental flaw of the system.

Roscommon, after beating Galway, made good by winning the Connacht championship and earning a place in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

Their prize?

A meeting with Galway.

To make matters worse, the game was fixed for Castlebar: the champions never even got to leave their own province. Beating Galway twice in one summer was an unfair ask. And Roscommon were doubly punished: the only teams not to get a second chance under the new system were the provincial champions.

Galway’s backdoor victory set the pattern for the next 10 years. Although the qualifying system was designed to help counties whose summer was often over before it began, the best teams took advantage of it.

Cork, Kerry and Tyrone all followed in Galway’s footsteps in claiming All-Irelands through the back-door route. But it also brightened up the championship.

Once knocked out of their respective provincial championships, glamour teams like Kerry or Dublin embarked on a travelling road show. So, for instance, in 2004, Dublin came to Carrick-on-Shannon to play Leitrim. A year later, Meath played at the same venue.

The great attraction of the qualifiers was that it threw the most unlikely of teams together.

In 2008, Monaghan and Kerry met in Croke Park in a third round qualifying team and the Ulster team came desperately close to knocking the All-Ireland champions out. By then, such surprises were commonplace.

In 2002, Sligo, inspired by Eamon O’Hara, sent a hotly tipped Tyrone team packing in the championship. A year later, a Donegal team that had gone without a win in the league and were beaten by Fermanagh in the first round of the Ulster championships went on a run which was just halted by Armagh in that year’s All-Ireland semi-final.

All of this was evidence of the fact the qualifying system had introduced a turbulent, unpredictable element into the competition. But no county matched the performance of Fermanagh in 2004.

Under Charlie Mulgrew, Fermanagh came seemingly from nowhere to string together an incredible series of victories.

After getting a walkover against Tipperary in the first round, they beat Meath, Cork, Donegal, and Armagh and drew the All-Ireland semi-final with Mayo before losing the replay.

Fermanagh, yet to win an Ulster title, came within a kick of a ball of an All-Ireland appearance against Kerry. Their win against Armagh remains one of the great shock results in the history of the championship.

“Well, we had a talented group of players,” former Fermanagh player and manager Peter McGinnity says.

“We had squads like that once before but the timing was good. But it was difficult for us to sustain it because of the lack of players coming through. A couple of injuries could knock us out of our stride but we were playing championship football for four or five years in late July and August.

“ They got to the Ulster final in 2008 so there was a five-year spell where the qualifiers propelled them. Our difficulty is that players come on stream in a cyclical way. We had two All-Stars in Barry Owens and Marty McGrath in that time. But there will be leaner times before we come across a select a group of players like those.

“That said, the qualifiers do work best for the strong teams but every so often teams like Fermanagh will grab on to those coat tails and have a fantastic ride being pulled along by the four or five best teams in the country.”

And that may be the essence of the qualifiers. Teams get on a roll, shake off traditional fears and inhibitions and play with freedom. It can come to a shuddering halt – Donegal beat Derry and Galway in the 2009 qualifiers before coughing up a record 27 points to Cork in the All-Ireland quarter -final.

But McGinnity is certain the advantages of the qualifiers are clear to be seen for Fermanagh and that the experience of the 2004 championship did lead to a shift in attitude within the county.

“The legacy is two-fold. On the one hand, we have a serious expectation now. The reality is that we were punching above our weight in that time. The awareness of GAA in Fermanagh has increased and we got people who did not go to matches but the buzz of those few years did have a tremendous effect. The residue of that still remains.

“The downside is that you have far more barstool men with opinions on how things should be done. Maybe our recent problems had something to do with that as well. There is no substitute for championship matches.

“I mean, I played for Fermanagh for years and years and I could count my championship games on a couple of hands. We got to the Ulster final in my time, but the league helped us there.

“Nothing beats winning a couple of championship matches. So from a purely Fermanagh point of view, the qualifiers have been good for us.”

The big question is whether, 10 years on, they are beginning to lose their impact.

For all of the wonder stories, none of the weaker counties have yet made the ultimate breakthrough. The qualifying series itself, run off on successive weeks in July, tends not to get the same live television or media exposure, so there have been a few lost classics along the way.

For all counties who experienced the euphoria of a good run through the qualifiers, the realisation came afterwards they were back at square one. Ten years on, that is more apparent than ever.

“It will lose momentum. It has to,” says McGinnity.

“All those teams who won back-door All-Irelands; they benefit enormously from the fact that you can afford to slip up once.

“So every so often a team like Fermanagh will get pulled along in the slipstream. But the qualifiers are not going to be a panacea or a magical solution to the problems in a county. It doesn’t work like that.”

It remains to be seen which team will surf the qualifying tide this summer. But the system seems tilted towards the traditional heavyweights. It is true that, no matter what championship structure is devised, the best teams will come through more often than not. But one can only guess at how the All-Ireland championships of the last decade might have gone if the GAA had been visionary enough to go for the radical proposition of the FDC.

“There is no doubt the last 10 years have been a lot better than what went before,” Noel Walsh says. “I was selector in a weak county for over 20 years. It was soul-destroying to train all winter and then go out and meet Kerry and you are gone.

“We felt that the proposal we had would have made a big difference to weaker counties and we really couldn’t see any disadvantage in it.

“It was a wonderful group of people because there was no aim other than to promote Gaelic football. But it didn’t get the support and that’s democracy. Maybe sometime in the future it will happen.”