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Great post fixlongfordgaa. Groups are not new and were only brought in initially in the senior leagues because of a pandemic, exceptional circumstances, but that's irrelevant as these are not groups, so why even mention them, these are "phases". When there have been groups previously, the top two of each group played off so at least the overall league was linked by the best teams in each playing each other. This is not the case in these phases. Results are just being aggregated together. There is zero equivalence between prior group structures and these "phases"
One thing that is right is that clubs voted for it, but that is irrelevant if what is voted for is not within GAA parameters. The executive has more votes than the clubs anyway so clubs are being outvoted on some issues. It has also come to light that players have been playing with both Green and White teams in Division 2. I am not sure how anyone can justify a player playing with two different teams in the same competition. Maybe the stats archive will show a precedent for this from the 1800s!
liosbreac6265 (Longford) - Posts: 290 - 25/06/2026 09:17:18
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I see Dromard topped Division 2 with 8 wins from 8 games, won the Michael Moran Cup and gained promotion to Division 1. We will shortly find out what format relegation will take and which two teams go down.
Reality 1, Rumours 0.
I see some new rumours have entered the forum. Reality will deal with those ones too.
LongfordgaaAbú (Longford) - Posts: 685 - 25/06/2026 13:21:03
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Looks like the County Board PR team has entered the chat!
Previous Competition Structures
LongfordgaaAbú, yes groups have been done before, but at the end of the group phase the top team, or top two teams, in each group would play off in a final or semi finals to decide the winner. So if you beat the team that beat all of the other teams in the other group it was fair enough to say that you were the best team in the competition.
A bit like the current Champions League Model, Longford also ran an open draw senior championship for a number of years where teams were drawn randomly and results were aggregated into one table, but this was to decide which teams would reach the quarter finals, not who would win the competition. It wasn't a great system, but you would have had to get an extremely bad draw not to make the quarter finals if you really deserved to. So there isn't that much wrong with the open draw part of it.
This Year's Structure:
However, I don't think there is any other sporting competition in the world where groups aggregate into a league table and THEN there is an extra open draw into further groups feeding into the same league table, where some teams play each other twice and some teams don't play at all. For example, Ballymore have gotten 5 or their 7 points from beating Ballymahon twice and Dromard have gotten 5 of their points from beating Killoe Green twice. If you can name another competition like this in any sport in the world then I take my hat off to you!
It would be one thing if the top four played off to decide who was promoted, but the fact that it's the table topping team who gets promoted gives this competition absolutely no integrity. Another poster said Dromard was always going to win the competition, if so, why did their county players need to break ranks and play for them? All clubs have issues with player availability and make the best of it. Why didn't they?
Could you imagine a Champions League where teams can't play international players for most of the games? Where Barcelona have two teams in the competition? Where Real Madrid top the table and win the competition by getting to play Slavia Prague twice and recall Mbappe and the lads from their countries in the middle of the competition when it looks like they are going to lose a game? That is actually a less crazy version of what happened in Division 2 this year.
Killoe White and Green
No fault in this lies with Killoe. I'm not sure they had a choice on whether or not they wanted to be promoted. Fair play to them being able to field two competitive teams in Division Two, but even if they played the first game against each other it still creates issues because they can transfer players from their Green team to their White team as they did in their last game against the Gaels. If the Green team finds themselves near the bottom of the table towards the end of the competition, they can transfer the stronger players onto the White team, so some clubs (without their county players) would get to have to play a strong Green team at the start, some would get to play a weak Green team at the end, and vice versa for the White Team.
If they absolutely positively had to be in the same division then yes a full league where everyone plays each other, with both Killoe teams playing each other first, would have been preferable. Or simply stick to the groups and play a double round of fixtures (one round with county players) with the teams who topped the group playing in the final to decide promotion.
I'm sure the argument was that there wasn't enough time to play 5 group games with county players (probably because Dromard and Ardagh are in the Senior Championship and that starts three weeks earlier than the Intermediate Championship on July 18th) but there is still going to be a four team relegation playoff with three further games for some teams, two of these likely being the Killoe Teams. So some teams are going to play 11 games in this competition anyway.
What Next?
This experiment has totally failed. The competition structure is crazy, it creates chaos trying to organise all of these fixtures for Killoe, and it hasn't even benefitted them! A strong Killoe White team could have been pushing for a top four place. Now it's looking likely that both Killoe Teams are going to be in the relegation zone, so the whole exercise of keeping them apart was completely pointless and you could even end up having two Killoe Teams in Division 3 next year.
"All teams got plenty of games" is a completely out of touch take. All club players in Longford deserve to play in fair, meaningful, and well organised competitions where they know their fixtures in advance and none of that happened this year in Division 2 due to the structure designed by the county board.
fixlongfordgaa (Longford) - Posts: 3 - 25/06/2026 13:37:14
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Replying To LongfordgaaAbú: "I see Dromard topped Division 2 with 8 wins from 8 games, won the Michael Moran Cup and gained promotion to Division 1. We will shortly find out what format relegation will take and which two teams go down.
Reality 1, Rumours 0.
I see some new rumours have entered the forum. Reality will deal with those ones too." Did someone deny that Dromard had won? What new rumours? You can't address the points that were made so just head off on an irrelevant tangent
liosbreac6265 (Longford) - Posts: 290 - 25/06/2026 14:26:35
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For anyone wondering how long groups have existed as an option in ACFL before the current decade...
Division 1 had groups in 2011 (1A and 1B). Slashers finished top of 1A and Clonguish finished top of 1B and Clonguish then beat Slashers in the Division 1 final. That was a 16-team division, so 7 teams from each group never played 7 teams from the other group, just as you would expect in any competition with groups.
Division 3 had groups for a number of years back in the 1980's and had three groups at one point. Then had groups again in the second half of the 2000's and again for a couple of years at the end of the 2010's.
Division 4 had groups for a couple of years in the late 2010's.
The Reserve Leagues which then changed to Divisions 4, 5 & 6 had groups in a number of years in the 2010's.
All of the above was before the pandemic!
One of the few advantages of being old is knowing that what seems new is not new at all!
LongfordgaaAbú (Longford) - Posts: 685 - 25/06/2026 14:50:20
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Replying To LongfordgaaAbú: "For anyone wondering how long groups have existed as an option in ACFL before the current decade...
Division 1 had groups in 2011 (1A and 1B). Slashers finished top of 1A and Clonguish finished top of 1B and Clonguish then beat Slashers in the Division 1 final. That was a 16-team division, so 7 teams from each group never played 7 teams from the other group, just as you would expect in any competition with groups.
Division 3 had groups for a number of years back in the 1980's and had three groups at one point. Then had groups again in the second half of the 2000's and again for a couple of years at the end of the 2010's.
Division 4 had groups for a couple of years in the late 2010's.
The Reserve Leagues which then changed to Divisions 4, 5 & 6 had groups in a number of years in the 2010's.
All of the above was before the pandemic!
One of the few advantages of being old is knowing that what seems new is not new at all!" None of those formats are comparable to what was done in Division 2 this year. So what seems new, is indeed new. As already stated when there were groups before, the toppers in each played each other so they were at least linked. Not the case here.
We now await some other irrelevant stats from the past
liosbreac6265 (Longford) - Posts: 290 - 25/06/2026 15:08:31
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Replying To LongfordgaaAbú: "For anyone wondering how long groups have existed as an option in ACFL before the current decade...
Division 1 had groups in 2011 (1A and 1B). Slashers finished top of 1A and Clonguish finished top of 1B and Clonguish then beat Slashers in the Division 1 final. That was a 16-team division, so 7 teams from each group never played 7 teams from the other group, just as you would expect in any competition with groups.
Division 3 had groups for a number of years back in the 1980's and had three groups at one point. Then had groups again in the second half of the 2000's and again for a couple of years at the end of the 2010's.
Division 4 had groups for a couple of years in the late 2010's.
The Reserve Leagues which then changed to Divisions 4, 5 & 6 had groups in a number of years in the 2010's.
All of the above was before the pandemic!
One of the few advantages of being old is knowing that what seems new is not new at all!" This is a classic example of a Strawmen argument. You take one point someone has made, isolate it from any context, and create your own representation of what others have said and try to debunk it. It's designed to move debate away from the core issues.
There is no problem with groups where the best teams in either group play off to determine the winner. Your argument is irrelevant and has already been discussed, so no need to search the archives for more evidence of league groups existing the 1920s.
fixlongfordgaa (Longford) - Posts: 3 - 25/06/2026 15:30:29
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