GAA PUNDIT COLM O’Rourke believes the football championship is in need of a drastic shake-up to address one-sided fixtures, following Dublin’s colossal win over Westmeath.
The reigning All-Ireland champions inflicted a 31-point hammering on the challengers in the Leinster SFC semi-final — their highest championship score under Jim Gavin.
It leaves Westmeath in a dermolaised state heading into the qualifiers, and O’Rourke insists that action must be taken to avoid these kind of results in the future.
Speaking on the Sunday Game after the fixture at Croke Park, he made the argument for the introduction of another championship to accommodate lower-level teams.
“What this shows again today is that the idea of a proper championship is a farce, whether in Leinster or in the rest of the country.
“Teams like Westmeath and a lot of other teams — 23 or 24 others — are just not able to compete.
The sooner we have different levels to suit the various teams, the better it would be.
“Westmeath players going home tonight must be in absolute despair and imagine trying to pick themselves up for a qualifier — it’s not going to happen.”
He added that Dublin cannot afford to show sympathy to Westmeath in situations like this.
Several players including Con O’Callaghan and Niall Scully are all competing for places as Dublin seek to defend their provincial and All-Ireland crowns this year.
“It was a sporting annihilation, an embarrassing thing for the Westmeath players.
Dublin are ruthless because they need to be. The young players that they have put in here, like Con O’Callaghan and Niall Scully, they’re playing for their places.
“Then Kevin McManamon and Bernard Brogan comes on. Imagine facing that when you’re getting tired?
“They need to go well too, to keep themselves in the frame. The Dubs are playing against themselves and therefore, the level of performance from each individual is judged on day-to-day.
“All they’re concentrating on, is an All-Ireland championship and we see from today’s performance that they’re fit, well, able, and the team ethic is running right through the team.
“They’re a formidable outfit.”
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GAA don’t care about anything but the airgead
The CPA proposals are not realistic. The month of April for Club fixtures? 1. It’s right in the business end of the National leagues. 2. Clubs aren’t and shouldn’t be ready for championship at that time of year. The finals are not until October.
The club finals work well on St Patricks day. It gives them the publicity and spotlight that they deserve. The alternative as proposed is to play them in late November/December. That’s not acceptable imo.
@Tim Dawson: club leagues should be started in early/mid February and ran off every week (or pretty much every week) which would have most leagues ran off by the end of April. Semi finals and finals to be ran off and completed by May/June. Club championships can then be started in April, not sure why you think this is too early as every club will be training since January? Not sure why if you start a champing April you couldn’t have it completed early August at the latest, which would allow provincials and all ireland series played out before the end of October.
Have a rigid fixture list in place and lose this nonsense of having 3/4 week gaps between games.
@Robert Callaghan: hem! Because there is also the intercounty league and championship and clubs will not play without their county players. The national league is played in April. That’s why you can’t have club championship then. Or are we now talking about punishing the county player for being better and flogging them to death?
@Tim Dawson: grand, start it in May then, or move National Leagues to March and get rid of the O’Byrne/McKenna cup preseason comps to freely time. The General point being that we have less gaps between games and a rigid calendar. The whole thing from intercounty down needs to be restructured because it’s broken.
Are you happy then to leave the fixture system the way it is and ignore the overwhelming opinion of club players? For what, because the club championship final has to be played on St. Patrick’s Days because it always has?