New system a qualified success

With some of its initial failings seemingly solved, Seán Moran wonders where the championship system will take teams like Sligo this season.

For many people, the most memorable event in last year's inaugural qualifier round was the victory of Sligo over Kildare.

It summed up the romance of the new system - a county rarely out of its province getting to play one of the leading counties in a rare appearance at Croke Park and recording a memorable win at headquarters in the process.

Manager Peter Ford and his team have already taken the first step on the road to this year's championship by winning their first round in New York last week. He recalls the circumstances of last year's qualifier round.

"When we had been beaten by Mayo by a single point we might have preferred not to have to play again and it took a few days to get over but it was to lead to them becoming the first Sligo team to win in Croke Park. I think that, for teams that had less than a week to get ready for a qualifier game, it must have been very hard.

"We didn't meet at all until in the swimming pool the following Friday. If we'd a match on the Saturday, obviously we'd have been back on the Tuesday and that would have been very soon for fellas who might have been conscious that they'd let the team down."

There was another side to the coin. Offaly lost to Dublin in mid-June and had to take the field against Louth six days later. They unexpectedly lost that as well.

On the day after that Louth match, Sligo's Noel McGuire met his UCD team-mate and Offaly player Ciarán McManus for a Dublin championship fixture.

McGuire had been involved with Sligo's qualifier in Carlow, also on the Saturday evening. McGuire remarked that Sligo's build-up had been ideal.

In the two weeks between losing to Mayo and travelling to Dr Cullen Park, the team had managed to have a full week off to recover, go back to their clubs and relax and a second week to train hard for the qualifier.

"He said that when they came back, it was like getting ready for the Mayo match all over again," said McManus at the time.

"Everyone was up for it. We had a 100 miles-per-hour match against Dublin and were back training. We would always take a week off after a championship match but this time we couldn't.

"I don't want to use it as an excuse. We knew we would be in for a difficult match against Louth. But we didn't start thinking about it until late in the week. The first few days were spent trying to forget Dublin and trying to avoid our own people.

"To be honest, it was driving us mad. All the talk was about Dublin and Louth were never mentioned. Even on Saturday night, you could see some Offaly supporters weren't that disappointed. It was as if giving Dublin a run was still the main thing."

It was a frequently criticised aspect of the qualifiers. Teams lining out within a week of a championship defeat had no chance to recover properly.

It wasn't until Dublin made contingencies for the Leinster final and whisked players off to a swimming pool on the evening of the defeat by Meath that a plan for handling the eventuality entered the public consciousness.

Six days later, they made Sligo's second visit to Croke Park a less happy memory.

"Now that people know what to expect, I think they'll approach it more positively," says Peter Ford. "They can see the benefit and see how Galway worked the system. They were down but they got out of it and won an All-Ireland."

There have been changes to the system to ensure that teams don't have to repeat matches against opponents they have already played in the provincial championships.

But there haven't been any moves to try and guarantee an extension to the six-day period.

"There was no way of doing that," according to Paraic Duffy, who chaired both the committee that drew up the blueprint for the qualifiers and the committee that reviewed its first year's working.

"We will try to guarantee a 13-day break from round four, but it just wasn't possible with the earlier rounds."

One of the difficulties is that, as soon as the dates for the qualifier rounds were set, the provincial councils arranged to play up to the preceding weekend - leaving any losers the minimum amount of time to prepare for their next match. Given the tightness of the championship schedules, the only guaranteed way around it would entail blank Sundays.

Ford believes that other rapidly changing structures in football have helped acceptance. The fact that National League matches are played on a calendar-year basis has familiarised teams with the demands of playing a sustained programme of matches on successive weeks.

He also feels that there will be one clinching argument on the qualifiers this year.

"I'd say if you were a fly on the wall of losing dressing-rooms this summer, you'd hear an awful lot of managers mentioning Galway and how they came back from defeat to win an All-Ireland. I think that will fire teams up after the disappointment of defeat."

Overall, Duffy is happy with the system that he has helped introduce. "It was a great success and I would hope it's repeated that a couple of teams come through who wouldn't have had a high profile in their province.

"The change that prevents teams from playing each other again before the semi-finals will be an improvement. There was a lot of disappointment last year when the All-Ireland quarter-finals produced three fixtures that had already been seen."

The whole championship format in both hurling and football will be reviewed at the end of 2003."I would never have said that this is the final solution," says Duffy, "and I don't know where it will take us in the next two years. I think it has been an improvement, but there will be major decisions to be taken in the next two years".