Sean Moran: Series of mishaps bedevilling the championship

Unlike in 2012 when his annual report dwelled on the coming summer’s European soccer championships and London Olympics, GAA director general Páraic Duffy didn’t see fit this year to blast out a warning about the pressures on sports coverage and how they might impact of the football and hurling championships.

Yet it's safe to say that to date the noise created by other sports this month – Euro 16, the rugby Tests in South Africa and last weekend Shane Lowry's challenge at the US Open – has been louder than four years ago.

In a way that’s been good, as the lack of focus has deflected attention from a series of mishaps and cock-ups that have bedevilled the championship so far.

The latest of these concerned Laois’s use of seven replacements in Saturday’s qualifier against Armagh. The case for a replay is unanswerable. The rules allow for forfeiture, replay or fine and the match was too closely contested – two points in it when the fateful last-minute replacement was made – not to justify a refixture.

As the matter was the subject of an investigation rather than an objection from the aggrieved county, the match couldn’t be awarded to Armagh even if Laois were disqualified – Rule 6.43 (b) (ii).

There has been confusion about the rules governing refixtures and replays in these circumstances. Six years ago Meath notoriously won the Leinster title because of an entirely invalid goal awarded in the last minute. There was no second match.

Last month Meath appeared to have won the Christy Ring final by a point but it later turned out that an Antrim score, correctly awarded, hadn't been recorded. That match will be replayed next Saturday.

No mechanism

The difference between the 2010 football match and the events of this summer is that there is no mechanism for reviewing a referee’s incorrect interpretation whereas there is for matters of fact. How many scores a team got or how many replacements they used is a matter of fact. Whether a goal should be allowed is a matter of interpretation even when that interpretation is clearly wrong.

It's not much consolation for Louth people but it is logical and necessary unless you want to determine outcomes of close matches in video suites.

A question arose in relation to the sideline official on Saturday and why he allowed an invalid substitution to take place but the official’s duties according to 4.1 (a) and (b) are simply to receive and record the substitutions – not to vet them. It’s up to the relevant team to do that and to know the rules.

But the Laois Seven wouldn't be the biggest fixtures disaster of the weekend. The Ulster Council's decision to stage the Tyrone-Cavan replay a full fortnight later – the same weekend as the qualifier round in which the losers are meant to participate – is a move that has created a major headache for the CCCC fixtures makers by creating an overhang in round two of the qualifiers as well as requiring Cavan or Tyrone to play in five successive weeks if they are to contest the quarter-finals.

Realistically, just as the disciplinary remit was transferred from the provincial councils to Croke Park there is a strong argument for fixtures to be so treated.

With the advent of the qualifiers it would represent a streamlining of the administrative process were the CCCC to have responsibility for fixtures throughout the provincial championships as well as at the All-Ireland stages and this would facilitate how the two dovetail.

It might also be time to reconsider the splitting of the qualifiers into ‘A’ and ‘B’ tracks. This was done in order to make the qualifiers more structured and defined. By dividing counties into these categories as they were eliminated from the provincial championship and playing their rounds on alternating weekends it would enable each to know on what days they would be in action and to be able to plan their club activities accordingly.

It would also reduce or eliminate the incidence of the ‘six-day turnarounds’ which sees teams, like Louth last week, having to recover from their provincial defeat and play a qualifier less than a week later.

Split rounds

Another issue with the split rounds is that they restrict the element of potential surprise in each round, can lead to lopsided draws and reduce anticipation in advance of the All-Ireland quarter-finals to a shadow of what it used to be.

The benefits of clarity and ensuring that counties know what they’re doing on each weekend have been compromised by events at the weekend to the extent that it’s valid to question whether the scheme is worth the above mentioned downsides.

The GAA has to optimise promotion and staging of the championship in order to make the best of its prime spectator attractions and that needs to happen both when everyone's watching and when their attention is elsewhere. smoran@irishtimes.com