Hasn't done Kilkenny any harm. Less games. Less chances for an off day. The front door is the most productive and efficient route to an all ireland. Look how few back door all irelands there have been in both codes.

Puddersthecat (Kilkenny) - Posts: 1692 - 02/08/2010 17:48:32    733214

At least hurling guarantees two provincial finalist in the semi's. If two were guaranteed in football, it's be accepted as well, it wouldn't be practical to offer a second chance beyond this.
This system works well in Australia, they've found it better than another system they used to use for the final eight.

legendzxix (Kerry) - Posts: 8852 - 02/08/2010 17:54:24    733229

It all boils down to whether you are good enough or not; both Kerry and Tyrone have won the AI through both front door and back door since the introduction of the qualifiers; this year we were not good enough.

kerrykerry (Kerry) - Posts: 1779 - 02/08/2010 18:05:20    733236

True kerrykerry, it does boil down to that.
At the same time the C'ship structure has flaws and equalities.

legendzxix (Kerry) - Posts: 8852 - 02/08/2010 18:19:47    733256

The_Real_IA
County: Meath
Posts: 106

omaghredhand

This is the first Dublin have come through the qualifiers and got to a semi-final. Tyrone have been beaten a few times when they've gone down the qualifier route, by Laois and Mayo for example. It's not a foolproof route for All-Ireland contenders

I never suggested that its a foolproof method, merely that it appears that it is becoming a better way to progress. The less games argument is flawed. If you consider, staying on the Leinster theme that Dublin played Tipperary and a thoroughly dejected Louth in essence they had two training games. I accept that the draw could have given them more difficult games but the fact is that they have been beaten as often as Meath and they are in a semi final and Meath are out. If you consider that the Provincial winners have had their semi final spot removed from them then generally sit idle for a few weeks and cannot afford to get beat then I would suggest that the qualifiers are weighted heavily in favour of teams that lose before reaching a provincial final. This is not about Tyrone or Kerry or Meath or Roscommon, or the four provincial losers come to that. This is about a system that in effect rewards getting beat up to a certain point. This is not a new discussion as some suggest. It most certainly is not a discussion brought up as a result of the last two weeks results. Dublin, in my opinion suffered greviously as a result of the qualifiers, Tyrone have done much better despite winning less provincial titles. The simple question is, why should a team that wins a provincial title not have equality in terms of having the luxury of losing a game?

Pudders, a comparison with hurling is not possible on this issue in my opinion. There are at most two teams with the ability to beat Kilkenny in any one year and the competition is heavily weighted to ensure that the best four teams are in the semi finals. Can the same be said of football? Probably not, although the teams left would certainly make the top 8. Personally, I think that if Kerry had of got another chance and had Galvin and Tom Se playing they would probably still have went on to win the All Ireland. As well as this, inhurling their is no chance of a team outside the top 6 getting beat by any of the other teams, whilst on a given day any of the top 12 in football could beat the other. I would suggest that Limerick would give any of those teams left their fill of it.

omaghredhand (Tyrone) - Posts: 3656 - 02/08/2010 21:16:04    733511

The notion that provincial champions are discriminated against by the football championship format is an illusion and the modification proposed by Mickey Harte, Martin Breheny and others is misguided.

1. There is nothing unfair or unusual in a competition format in which a team which has won all of its games can be knocked out in the later stages of a competition by a team which has lost a match earlier in the competition. This can happen in:
- Soccer World Cup, European Championships, Champions League
- Rugby World Cup, Heineken Cup
- National Football League, many County Championships and
- !!!!!! All Ireland Championship format proposed by Mickey Harte, Martin Breheny etc. (Have they not looked at the semi finals?) !!!!!!!

2. To understand the current system better, consider the following
- Provincial championships are knock out. If you are beaten once, you are out of the provincial championships.
- After the provincial championships, 32 teams enter the All Ireland championships.
- There are 7 rounds in the All Ireland championships
- The provincial champions get a bye to Round 5 (quarter final); the other 28 enter between Round 1 and Round 4.
- The All Ireland championship is knock out. If you are beaten once, you are out of the All Ireland championship. No team gets a second chance in the All Ireland championship. Under the Harte/Breheny system, 2 teams would get a second chance.

3. If every match is 50/50, provincial champions have twice as good a chance of the All Ireland as provincial final losers, 8 times as good as beaten semi finalists and 16 times as good as beaten quarter finalists. The corresponding figures for the alternative system are 6, 24 and 48. This is surely excessive especially as some teams can win a provincial title with 2 games while others need 4.

4. Under the Harte/Breheny system, there would be only 2 quarter finals and 2 matches in the round before the quarters. This would eliminate 2 attractive double headers from recent weekends. All this to accommodate 2 non knock out matches which don't achieve the only target which the proposers set - see under papagraph 1 above.

5. In the last 10 years, 280 teams have tried the back door. By September 2010, 6 teams will have won the All Ireland- a strike rate of 1 in 47.
40 provincial champions have produced 4 All Ireland winners - a strike rate of 1 in 10.

6. To summarise, winning the provincial championships increases a team's chances of winning the All Ireland substantially. Any Provincial champions who disagree should volunteer to go into the earlier qualifier rounds and allow some other team to shoulder the burden that a bye into the quarter finals seems to have become for some.

tommy58 (Dublin) - Posts: 169 - 02/08/2010 21:47:03    733578

Pudders is right. For the best teams, it isn't an issue. Obviously at the moment in football, the gaps between the best counties and the mediocre counties are small, so the chances of there being surprises are greater, which obviously isn't the case in Hurling.
Good point Tommy 58. Spain won the World Cup after losing their first match whilst the Dutch didn't lose a game until the Final.

Tongo (UK) - Posts: 1795 - 03/08/2010 08:04:25    733610

As mentioned in the main Hoganstand page:

Kelly fears for provincial championships

Former GAA president Sean Kelly believes the provincial structures have been diminished after all four provincial winners were knocked out of the All-Ireland race last weekend.

Writing in the Irish Examiner, he said: "The downside of all this romance is at what cost to the provincial championship. A week ago we saw all provincial runners-up bite the dust. Now last weekend we saw all provincial winners follow suit.

"The fallout from that statistic will be very interesting. Managers and players and the GPA can add a lot to that debate.

"Of primary significance will be the attitude of managers of successful teams in recent years at provincial and All-Ireland level. Jack O'Connor and Mickey Harte made no secret of their desire to win at provincial level. What do they think now? If both Harte and O'Connor were to say that success at provincial level were detrimental to All-Ireland glory, it would be a massive blow to the beleaguered provincial championships.

"Right now, the most worried officials in the GAA are at provincial council level. And they have good reason to be. Already the backdoor has knocked thousands off those attending many provincial finals - when did you have a full house for a Munster provincial final last?"

legendzxix (Kerry) - Posts: 8852 - 03/08/2010 11:54:10    733840

Tommy58: 5. In the last 10 years, 280 teams have tried the back door. By September 2010, 6 teams will have won the All Ireland- a strike rate of 1 in 47.
40 provincial champions have produced 4 All Ireland winners - a strike rate of 1 in 10.

Tommy your suggestion of a 1 in 47 conversion rate, which is based on a 28 team backdoor participation, presupposes that every backdoor winner has come through all rounds of the backdoor (ie. lost the first round of their provincial championship). But most (if not all?) of the 6 teams who've actually won the A-I via the backdoor did not come from that far back. Equally, if all the losers are to be included in the backdoor statistics then all the losers need to be included in the provincial route stats or else you're not comparing like with like. If anything, taking all teams that participate in each of the routes to arrive at a 'strike rate' should work out even worse for provincial winners because 1 more team participates in the provincial championships than the backdoor competition (New York). So if we take your 1 in 47 and attempt to compare the provincial route on the same basis, then we get 33 x 10 (Kilkenny excluded) = 330 which we need to divide by the number of A-I winners (4), and that gives a comparable 'strike rate' of 1 in 82.5 for the provincial route. This is the way most people are perceiving things without actually doing the maths, and the reason why this thread was raised.

The suspicion is that going forward greater numbers of A-I winners are likely to come via the backdoor qualifiers because the backdoor teams (whoever they are in any given year) are improving to a higher level generally than teams winning (or losing) provincial titles.

Pericles (Mayo) - Posts: 2521 - 13/08/2010 16:47:23    745556

Pericles,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

In deciding whether there has been any point in winning the provincial championship, you must compare the performance of all provincial champions with that of all those who did not win the provincial championship. That is where I got 4 AI winners out of 40 (i.e. 10%) for the former and 6 out of 280 (i.e 2%) for the latter.

I have taken up your suggestion of looking at the issue in more detail and compared the AI winning ratio of those who lost at various rounds of the prov chmps.

Out of 40 provincial champions, 4 have won the All Ireland. 4/40 = 10%
Out of 40 provincial runners-up, 2 have won the All Ireland. 2/40 = 5%
Out of 80 provincial semi final losers, 2 or 3 will have won the All Ireland. 2/80 = 2.5% (3/80 = 3.75%)
Out of 160 who did not reach provincial semi final, 1 or 2 will have won the All Ireland. 1/160 = 0.625% (2/160 = 1.25%)

So, provincial champions have done better than runners-up who, in turn, have done better than semi final losers who, in turn have done better than the earlier losers. There doesn't appear to have been much to gain, on average, from losing in any round of the provincial championship.

As well as helping a team's AI prospects, provincial championships are worth winning for their own sakes. The paying public seem to think so. The combined attendance at the four provincial finals is about double that at the Round 4 qualifiers even though the prize for both is a place in the AI quarter finals.

Thanks again for your reply, Pericles.

P.S. Comparing the respective performances of the 4 back door quarter finalists with that of provincial champions is an interesting topic but does not take from what I have written above or in my earlier post (03/08/10)

tommy58 (Dublin) - Posts: 169 - 14/08/2010 13:39:13    745985

i have to agree, seems like the "big teams" are moaning this year and believe everything has collapsed just because they arnt involved. they had no problem any other year. yes some managers have complained but its mainly about the time delay from the provincial to the quarters..sort this out and things will get better. two of our provinces have 5 and 6 counties in them though. so either way they will play less games than those coming through the qualifiers. i really cant see how you can shake things up radically without changing the system at large.

seany16 (Dublin) - Posts: 1663 - 14/08/2010 14:06:02    746002

Maybe not for the "big" teams, but the Rossies certainly celebrated winning a provincial title this year, while Louth or Limerick would have loved to be provincial champions and Monaghan seemed to put all their efforts into winning Ulster. I suppose it depends on your priorities.

football first (None) - Posts: 1259 - 14/08/2010 14:23:55    746010

the point is you win your province and you get to an ll ireland quarter final...
if you lose that

TOUGH LUCK

pidge (Cork) - Posts: 543 - 14/08/2010 15:14:01    746048

Yea to be honest, I don't know what the moan is about. The advantage of winning your province is that you get fast tracked to the quarter final. Ok, we have seen how going through the qualifiers can strenghten a team but it can go the other way too. The teams that I felt got the most hard done is the province losers, ie Monaghan and Sligo and the timeframe they had to go out and play against teams that were getting stronger and stronger in the qualifiers. If anything should be looked at, it is that.

kerrykerry (Kerry) - Posts: 1779 - 14/08/2010 15:33:50    746065

I was on my holidays Tommy and my netbook packed up, so had to wait till I got home to answer your interesting stats post, but I still feel that taking no account of teams beaten by the provincial winners distorts the comparison. It's not as if the provincial winners just get elected and only the backdoor teams have to play games to get to the quarters. As I said in my earlier post, nobody would ever suggest that a provincial winner or even a loser will not win an A-I by that route again, it's just that when it gets to that critical stage of knockout the teams that have played week in week out in knockout games are performing better at an increasing rate. The stat of 1 win out of 11 for provincial losers on a 7-day turnaround over the decade says all there needs to be said about their chances, so agree very much with Kerrykerry, that problem needs to be addressed as a priority. And really I don't have an axe to grind as regards my own county, as Mayo continue to do far better as provincial champions and have never gone any distance via the backdoor... but imo the system now needs some rebalancing.

Pericles (Mayo) - Posts: 2521 - 14/08/2010 18:33:31    746181

There would have been a lot of bonfires in Limerick if we had won the provincial football for the first time in a 100 years. Weaker counties need some carrot

saortheas (Limerick) - Posts: 47 - 18/08/2010 10:51:41    749048

Its been mentioned by a few posters that Mickey Harte has been complaining about the structure for years, however his complaints get diluted because he complains about everything. Reckon he must rely on a strike rate of people listeneing to 1 in 10 of his moans. No doubt this particular one has been elevated up the complaint list since Tyrone were beaten by Dublin.

Burnsey (Down) - Posts: 561 - 18/08/2010 13:14:48    749271

Any county that wants to go the backdoor route is welcome to go for it, there is nothing to stop a manager sticking in a few minors in in the first round of the championship and there you go. Don't be complaining if your name gets called out alongside Cork, Dublin, Down, Kildare or even Antrim in the qualifiers as Kildare nearly found out. The teams that get through the qualifiers are obviously the form teams as they have won 2, 3, 4 matches in a row to get there. Don't be surprised when they give the provincial winners a tough game (it's very unlikely they will be getting Kilkenny or Leitrim in the quarter finals). The best teams over the last 7 years have been Kerry and Tyrone and they have shared the last 7 AI, sometimes they won it by winning there province, sometimes they didn't but with the current system the best team has risen to the top. This year Kerry had problems with discipline (nothing to do with backdoors) as well as 4 Allstar retirements, Tyrone ran into a very good Dublin team. As well as that they had a lot of mileage on the clock. Dooher, O'Neill for a start didn't look as sharp as they have been in the past, Penrose hit the bar once and stopped when through on goal once when someone in the crowd blew a whistle, Dublin hit the post when level with 5 minutes to go and the ball came back out to a Dublin player who stuck it in the net... sometimes matches don't go your way against dangerous opponents. The other 2 provincial winners were Roscommon and Meath who no matter what they say were on a downer after the way the Leinster title was won. They were both going to be in danger against a qualifier team.

maiden (Down) - Posts: 85 - 18/08/2010 13:37:43    749307

A team that has gone through the back-door and seen the advantages of it and then seen the disadvantage in lying idle after winning a provincial title are in a good place to comment on the championship structure.
As has been said often enough, Dublin called for change last year and Tyrone backed it then as well.
A fair solution could be home advantage to the provincial winner e.g. for Cork to take the place of the Connaught champion in the all-ireland semi's this year, they should have faced a game against the Connaught champion in their own province first.
When the back-door was first voted through they wanted the provincial champion to have home advantage but it was defeated in congress. Clare for example felt it would be unfair if they went through the qualifiers to have to play Kerry in Killarmey for example. Well Clare have never gotten that far in the 10 years and it has to be said home advantage in the very least would be right for provincial champions. It's give more games for provincial grounds as well.

legendzxix (Kerry) - Posts: 8852 - 18/08/2010 14:23:10    749379

it suits kildare they havnt won anything in years and wont win anything this year either

nowins (Carlow) - Posts: 102 - 19/08/2010 19:03:35    750904