A case of to B or not to B

TOMORROW'S All Ireland B football final is the first time the competition has gone to a replay in its seven years. With the focus on it for a second time in three weeks, opinions on its value remain varied.

The idea of a competition that would give a meaningful outlet to teams with little chance of making an impact in the championship was welcomed and almost immediately attracted a high profile.

Originally open to all counties who had not won a senior All Ireland since 1927, although not all counties entitled to enter did so, the competition has had its terms of entry varied slightly in the meantime.

In the first two years, the B competition was won by counties that went on to have a huge impact on the senior championship, Leitrim and Clare. Both were to win their provincial titles for the first time in 67 and 75 years respectively.

Their successors in winning the title were less successful and in the years since none of the B winners have attained comparable profiles. A certain scepticism set in as to the value of winning the title but each year sufficient numbers of county teams, whether because of ambitious new management or for whatever reason, decide to make a serious bid for the competition.

The reasons for harbouring ambition in the B generally relate more often to desperation than anything else. It is seen as a pick me up for teams that need to win something either to create momentum or to overcome a bad experience.

Mattie Kerrigan took Westmeath to the final against Carlow two years ago but was fairly lukewarm about the prospect of winning. Carlow duly won and went on to make an increased impact on the Leinster championship without ever threatening to win it. Kerrigan said that he would prefer to be reaching League or Leinster finals rather than the B final:

Whereas he had a point, his was a completely different perspective to Leitrim's and Clare's. Westmeath had already made an impact earlier that year by beating then All Ireland champions Derry in the League quarter final, before running Meath close in the semifinal. They had comparatively little to gain from the B title.

The claims made for the competition on the basis of Leitrim and Clare is necessarily given a different perspective by hindsight. At the time, Leitrim were a hot property because they had a 100 per cent record in Division Two. On the first day of the season they had won in Newbridge and ended up in the limelight reserved for Mick O'Dwyer on his first competitive outing with Kildare. Leitrim's breakthrough in Connacht was over three years later, under a new manager.

Clare provided a clearer connection, with their B final against Longford part of a winning streak that took them to a narrow League quarter final defeat by Meath, the team's only competitive loss between the previous May and the following August's memorable All Ireland semi final against Dublin.

Clare's manager then was John Maughan, who went on this year to lead his own county Mayo to the All Ireland final. He is upbeat about the B title.

"It's not a Mickey Mouse competition. A couple of managers, at least, do target it every year and it can be a stepping stone. It makes a team focus on a short term goal. At the first couple of training sessions, you can say `here's what we can try to achieve'."

"It did have an effect on Clare. The team was feted, there were bonfires along the way home. It was the first title Clare had won for donkeys' years. We prepared hard for it, set the target, talked about it and afterwards had a great sense of achievement.

In hindsight, maybe it was a step along the way to winning in Munster but we were well placed there. Cork were playing Kerry in the first round and one was being got out of the way. I'm sure if Fermanagh or Longford were to have successful runs, they would look back on this as a catalyst."

Niall Rennick managed Clare's successors as B champions, Wicklow, who defeated Antrim almost four years ago to the day. He is more sceptical about the whole competition but had his own reasons for wanting to do well in 1992.

"I was very keen to win it at the time. We were coming off the back of a heavy defeat by Kildare in the championship so it was important to us. At the time, to be honest, I didn't think it was going to be the start of anything big. I just thought it was a competition that Wicklow had to win because they needed to win something. It wasn't even nice to win. It was something we had to win.

"We put a lot into it. There were League matches on one Sunday, B matches the next and Baltinglass were going well in the Leinster club at the time and had fixtures on a few Saturdays."

Both Rennick and Kerrigan are similarly unimpressed by the Leitrim and Clare precedent. Kerrigan feels that the counties would have come anyway and Rennick agrees. His Wicklow team had come to championship grief against Kildare in 1992 and would do so again the following summer. In the first match they were hammered and a year later, blew a huge nine point half time lead and a respectable three point advantage halfway through the second half.

"If I look back, I think Clare and Leitrim won it on the way up but Wicklow won it on the way down. Maybe it would have been different if we could have got over Kildare those two years. I think Wicklow would have been better equipped to take on Dublin.

"I did make little of it afterwards, told the players to keep their feet on the ground. Being from Meath and having seen what senior success can do for a county, maybe I should have made more of it."