GAA approves green proposal to reform football championship

The GAA have approved the ‘green proposal’ football championship reform, for submission to annual congress, scheduled to take place in the Connacht GAA Centre in Bekan, county Mayo at the end of February.

At Saturday’s virtual Central Council meeting, the decision was taken with no voices raised against its acceptance.

The alternative ‘red proposal’ was discussed but largely by counties opposed to it and there were no speakers in favour of the idea, which would have switched the national league to the summer with provincial championships brought forward to earlier in the year.

In outline, the accepted format proposes keeping the national league in the spring and provincial championships in the early summer. It introduces a tiered All-Ireland structure, based on four groups of four - the counties to be drawn from the eight provincial finalists and the next eight teams in order of league seniority.

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Group winners progress straight to quarter-finals and second and third-placed teams contest remaining four places. The next 16 counties, based on league ranking, to go into four groups for the Tier 2 Tailteann Cup.

Using 2021 as a template the 16 teams in Sam Maguire would be Mayo, Galway, Dublin, Kildare, Kerry, Cork, Tyrone and Monaghan from the provincial championships, joined by Donegal, Roscommon, Armagh, Meath, Down, Clare, Derry and Offaly.

The 16 teams in the Tailteann Cup would have been: Antrim, Carlow, Cavan, Fermanagh, Laois, Limerick, Leitrim, London, Longford, Louth, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow. New York would also participate in a preliminary qualifier.

The question of Dublin development funding was raised by Westmeath in the context of the motion, backed by them and five other counties, which was ruled out of order earlier in the week by the Rules Advisory Committee.

Their comments came before a presentation by Shane Flanagan, GAA director of coaching games development, on the subject of development funding and updating delegates on steps being taken to address this issue.

The findings will be distributed to the counties for discussion and is intended to have a new funding model in place by 2023.

Other decisions taken included the approval for a three year trial of just one elite-level, under-age championship to be organised at under-19. As a result the minor grade, currently under-17, will become a development championship and the under-20 will be discontinued for the duration of the trial.

An Antrim motion to withdraw the permit given to Kerry hurlers to recruit players under the parentage rule was defeated. It had just been given the go-ahead at the last meeting of 2021.

That decision was taken in the face of opposition from the GAA’s CCCC, which recommended rejection because Kerry hurlers didn’t satisfy the criteria for such a dispensation: a playing population of less than 8,000 and having spent 15 of the last 20 years at the lowest level of the game.

Kerry have been runners-up in the past two years in the Tier 2 McDonagh Cup but there was precedent in Westmeath - another established McDonagh Cup county - being allowed recruit former Galway hurler Davy Glennon under the rule, which had also been opposed by the CCCC.