THE GAA’s fixture task force is planning to recommend radical options including rebalancing the provincial football system into four eight-team competitions and splitting the calendar in two – plans that will almost certainly be laid to waste if Special Congress votes in favour of a tiered championship this afternoon.
The Irish News has learned that the task force – which was set up earlier this year by the GAA – is planning to put forward up to five new ideas in its report, which is due to be released next month.
The body was tasked with coming up with solutions to the association’s fixtures crisis, and their brief included examining “current national competition structures and their timing in the context of the time available for the inter-county game.”
The report was being produced with a view to putting motions forward to the GAA’s Annual Congress at the beginning of next year, but the insertion of this weekend’s Special Congress would leave it looking very unlikely that the task force would be able to affect change.
The GAA has pressed ahead with plans to introduce a tiered championship, which will be voted on at Páirc Úi Chaoimh this afternoon.
The vote seems likely to go in favour of Central Council’s motion. Voting allocations for counties and overseas units at a Special Congress is reduced by half, but past presidents and management committee votes remain as they would be at a full Congress.
If the tiered championship is passed, it seems unlikely that any plan put forward by the task force would be voted in next year to supersede it.
One of the plans that the fixtures task force is looking at would see the provincial football championships retained, but the borders relaxed to allow the four provinces to be played on an equal footing, with eight teams taking part in each.
The lowest placed Ulster team in the National Leagues would move into the Connacht championship, while three would move out of Leinster – one to Connacht and two to Munster. The championship would then be played on a round robin basis.
Another plan would see the inter-county season flipped upside down, with the provincial championships taking place between January and March, with the football championship played in summer on the basis of the current league structure.
Teams from all four divisions would have the chance to compete for Sam Maguire, with the top teams in Divisions 3 and 4 playing in preliminary All-Ireland quarter-finals, while eight teams’ season would end upon the completion of the round-robin league games.
A third option would see the season split into two, with the All-Ireland football final taking place as the last game of the inter-county season on the last weekend of July.
The championships would begin on the first weekend of April and both league and championship would retain their current structures.
Under the plan, only eight counties would remain in the inter-county championship beyond the first weekend of June, thus creating almost a full half of the year in which counties can play their club games.
Another radical proposal would see each month between April and September split into alternative two-week windows, with the first window given over to clubs and the second over to inter-county games.
All inter-county players would be made available to their clubs for two weeks out of every four, and would still allow for the All-Ireland football final to be played on the first weekend of September.
