BLOG: Minor provincial winners are the real losers
August 03, 2010At senior level there is a reward for provincial success, and we don't mean just the silverware. You progress to a stage of the championship further than the team you have just beaten. Kerry, Tyrone, Meath and Roscommon all received automatic quarter-final places while Limerick, Monaghan, Louth and Sligo were back in round four of the football qualifiers.
There is incentive to win a senior title regardless of what happened over the past weekend, there can be no denying that.
Compare that to the structure of the ESB All-Ireland MFC. The four provincial winners reward for claiming silverware is a place in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. The four losers - what happens to them I hear you ask? Well, they get the exact same prize, an automatic quarter final appearance.
For close on ten years this is the way we have run the championship and now the most important game at minor provincial football level is the semi-final, as everybody knows that once you reach the holy grail of a final then you are guaranteed a quarter-final place.
Longford claimed their second Leinster title in eight years and they failed to make an All-Ireland semi-final, as Galway defeated them last Saturday. For them a provincial title has real worth but as a champion they deserve to be ahead of a losing finalist in the pecking order. The same goes for Tyrone, Mayo and Cork - all of whom did manage to overcome the potential pitfall that is the quarter-final.
At minor level the provincial winners should play off for a guaranteed semi-final place with the two losers of those games facing two beaten finalists, who have qualified by playing two games among the four provincial losers.
There is talk of championing this idea at senior level also, but it needs to be implemented at under 18 level for 2011 to remove the unfairness that currently exists in the system.
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