Plan for under-19 championship format may go to special congress

The weekend’s GAA annual congress was instructive in a familiar way. If motions are in any way ambiguous or hard to grasp they will have a problem securing endorsement from delegates.

One significant issue was parked for the time being after extensive debate. Motion 2 on introducing under-19 as the only elite underage championship didn’t quite make it to the required 60 per cent majority. More than 55 per cent voted in its favour but it will now go back for further consideration, possibly to a special congress.

There was an obvious contrast with Motion 1, the new All-Ireland football championship to be trialled for three years from 2023.

The genesis of the proposal that combines provincial championships with round-robin format in both its Tier 1 (Sam Maguire) and Tier 2 (Tailteann Cup) formats was last autumn’s special congress, which ruled out the radical Option B, which proposed the switching of league and provincial championships calendars.

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That process of taking on board reservations and returning with an improved blueprint was praised during the debate on motion 1, including by Fermanagh, whose delegation stated that all of their misgivings about Option B had been addressed.

Ominously, during the discussion of Motion 2, a few voices were raised pointing out that in comparison with Motion 1, it was sketchy and light on detail. This reservation was probably more than enough to sink the proposal’s chances of getting the additional four and a half per cent.

After congress, president Larry McCarthy accepted that the ambiguity hadn’t helped

“I think it might have lacked a bit of detail on it. There wasn’t consensus, obviously, if you’re split 50-50 virtually but I suspect a lack of detail as well. There was a telling comment made that there were three and a half pages of whatever was in the rulebook and it was going to be replaced by two lines here. And we hadn’t thought of that.”

Yet the research and reasoning behind the proposal had been top class, especially the input of the Talent Academy and Player Development committee report. The president was asked was it a concern that yet again, an expert body had devoted a lot of time (including considering 7,000 submissions) voluntarily only to fail to have its evidence-based proposals ignored.

He agreed but also acknowledged that the GAA’s bank of full-time expertise was growing and that it was the responsibility of the association to bring the delegates and membership with them.

"It is. I think there is enough expertise within the association anyway to do it. When you think of people like [John] Tobin and Shane Flanagan and some of the other people that are working on games development at the moment, they are kind of a new generation of people on it.

“Their expertise is to be used in this case. It is now up to us to convince the membership that this is what we should be doing. Clearly we didn’t do it today. We have to do it going forward.”