Divide the County, and Conquer
Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 2:43 pm
This is largely in response to AZ's implorings that we move to a divisional structure. Having looked at the case for a while, I'm inclined to agree, based on the following type of set up. I've submitted it to the Indo, but I suspect it'll be a bit long, but you never know. All thoughts welcome anyway.
Hard cases make for bad law. As old sayings go, it’s not one of the more well known, if for no other reason than your average Bórd na Móna or Banagher Concrete employee tends not to be involved in legislating for the state on a day to day basis. Members of the legal profession on the other hand will know it all too well, usually invoking it when ill-thought out laws are imposed in response to a crisis, or a one off emotional case .
It could be argued that Offaly football right now is a very hard case. Division 4, a pathetic display in the Leinster Championship and an atrocious exit from the Tommy Murphy cup at the hands of Wicklow have reduced the county’s supporters and indeed those on the county board charged with the administration of the sport to utter distress. That something has to be done is not in doubt.
The danger is that it appears that something is being done, with the county board having opened discussions on the feasibility of parish teams being imposed. This is the ultimate in ill thought out solutions, with countless reasons why it should not be done – but here’s a few, just for starters:
(1) Rivalries within parishes are among the most intense in the county – there is little or no chance that amalgamated teams would be anything other than playgrounds for biased selectors who would be fighting for their own players over the interest of the team.
(2) Many of the parishes in Offaly would still be off the pace if they were amalgamated. The point of creating parish teams is that the overall standard is raised and that these new teams could be competitive in a senior championship. The parishes of Daingean, Killeigh/Raheen and St. Broughan’s are often cited, but the truth is that none of these amalgamations have a county starter between them, and the amalgamation would still be way off the standard required to win the Dowling cup. In this scenario players would choose to put their primary focus on the titles they could win – the Intermediate and Junior championships with their clubs.
(3) Much of the strength of Offaly football is derived from the hard work of tiny villages that would be swallowed up in these arrangements. Any system could only work if these clubs are kept going as full adult clubs, with any additional structure introduced to work in harmony with this. A parish team in Killeigh Raheen for example would have to mean that these clubs could never go senior on their own – the parish team would be decimated if Raheen for example won the Intermediate championship on their own, as they look quite likely to do this year. In that situation Raheen would want to play senior by themselves, and the parish team would cease to exist. The same could apply in St. Broughans were Walsh Island to make the breakthrough, or Edenderry for that matter. Or to take another view on it, how is football in Croghan served when only two or three players are good enough to make a Rhode parish team?
(4) What of the clubs that are a parish by themselves? The whole point is that every player can play senior football if he’s good enough. How does this serve Seán Ryan of Birr or Conor Mahon of Kilcormac/Killoughey, two county panellists who would still have no access to senior football.
The truth is that a solution exists, and the remarkable thing is that the template is in place and serving no less a county than Kerry. They create districts, where Intermediate and Junior club players can play in the senior championships with their “Divisional” teams, and if the club is good enough to get promoted to senior by themselves, the divisional team can keep going since no one club forms the majority of players on any team.
Remarkably, these divisions already exist in Offaly, helpfully put in place by the church in the form of dioceses – no doubt the early archbishops foresaw the impending crisis in Offaly GAA. The names would need work, but if the divisions were (1) the parishes in the Killaloe diocese (along with Clareen of Ossory), (2) the parishes of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise (along with Lusmagh of Clonfert) (3) the parishes of the Meath Diocese and (4) the parishes of Kildare and Leighlin, we would have four very competitive teams. These four divisional teams, along with ten senior clubs, would form a county championship where all of Offaly’s best players were taking part. They would also ensure that the players would take it very seriously, as Kildare and Leighlin would offer the likes of Padraig Bracken and Ross Connor a much better chance of a county senior medal than their respective parish teams ever could. Some of the districts would seem a bit light, but when one factors in that a couple of extra teams would have to be relegated in order for this to work, most divisions would have a fair few clubs to pick from.
The format would be fairly simple – three senior championship groups, two of five clubs each and one of the four divisions, with the top six clubs and two divisions making the quarters. The divisions would have to be kept apart to ensure that a divisional team with very little time to prepare as a unit would not get caught out by a club team that has had much more training time together. Thus all the best players in Offaly would be taking part in the senior championship, and we would no longer have one of the few championships in Ireland where so many “senior” clubs take the field in May as 100/1 shots to lift the county title. (Your writer is also a bookmaker by profession, and in very few other counties would teams that are twelve or thirteen points worse than the front-runners – i.e. complete no-hopers of ultimate success - be senior grade).
Aside from the benefits to the senior championship, the creation of coherent amalgamations at minor and under-21 level would provide much better championships at those grades also, while creating real continuity in these new amalgamations. It would also create enthusiasm for the senior championship in areas where none has existed for some time. Finally, who’s to say that there aren’t players in all these junior clubs that would surprise us all if they made the step up? Good players are hard enough to come by without leaving in place a structure that can hide them. Perhaps in Clonbullogue there is a corner back capable of neutralising any corner forward in Ireland, but we’ll never know because he goes about his business quietly and never gets the chance to mark a Niall McNamee or Thomas Deehan to prove the point.
As with any change, there would be tough pills to swallow. Right now there are twelve senior clubs in Offaly, and realistically this would have to reduce to ten. Many clubs find senior status hard enough to obtain and hold already without raising the bar even further. Players from intermediate and junior clubs would have to spend a set amount of time with their divisional squad rather than just spending all their time with the club team (though this could be counteracted by the improved training that the players might get, with the knock on effect for the club side).
Above all, the whole point of creating these teams is to make them competitive. If they are competitive, they will win games and eventually one of them will win the championship. No doubt there would then be mutterings about how hard a county title is to win anyway without these amalgamations coming in, but the hope would be that the greater good would be understood by all. In Kerry this year, South Kerry are going for their fourth Kerry championship in a row, while it looks likely that three of the four semi finalists in 2007 will be divisional sides. One has to wonder how other clubs in Offaly would feel if the equivalent situation occurred here and it was Rhode along with Clonmacnoise, Leighlin and Killaloe in the county semi finals.
Ultimately, the hope has to be that they’d understand, simply because the standard of the county team would be brought on to a degree where being an Offaly supporter would be something to celebrate again.
As a final thought for the county board, this should be considered. When looking to improve football in the county, who should be the model? Parish amalgamations have been brought into place in Laois in recent years, and while obviously Laois have certainly had the upper hand over Offaly in this decade, another perspective would be that they have taken a string of highly talented minor teams and landed a solitary Leinster Championship as their only senior trophy. A Leinster title is not to be sniffed at, but is it really a sufficient harvest with such great underage success?
On the other hand, should we model ourselves on the kingpins of the game, the one team in the country who are competitive year in year out and for whom All Ireland success and only All Ireland success is the benchmark? It should be straightforward. No bad law please lads.
Hard cases make for bad law. As old sayings go, it’s not one of the more well known, if for no other reason than your average Bórd na Móna or Banagher Concrete employee tends not to be involved in legislating for the state on a day to day basis. Members of the legal profession on the other hand will know it all too well, usually invoking it when ill-thought out laws are imposed in response to a crisis, or a one off emotional case .
It could be argued that Offaly football right now is a very hard case. Division 4, a pathetic display in the Leinster Championship and an atrocious exit from the Tommy Murphy cup at the hands of Wicklow have reduced the county’s supporters and indeed those on the county board charged with the administration of the sport to utter distress. That something has to be done is not in doubt.
The danger is that it appears that something is being done, with the county board having opened discussions on the feasibility of parish teams being imposed. This is the ultimate in ill thought out solutions, with countless reasons why it should not be done – but here’s a few, just for starters:
(1) Rivalries within parishes are among the most intense in the county – there is little or no chance that amalgamated teams would be anything other than playgrounds for biased selectors who would be fighting for their own players over the interest of the team.
(2) Many of the parishes in Offaly would still be off the pace if they were amalgamated. The point of creating parish teams is that the overall standard is raised and that these new teams could be competitive in a senior championship. The parishes of Daingean, Killeigh/Raheen and St. Broughan’s are often cited, but the truth is that none of these amalgamations have a county starter between them, and the amalgamation would still be way off the standard required to win the Dowling cup. In this scenario players would choose to put their primary focus on the titles they could win – the Intermediate and Junior championships with their clubs.
(3) Much of the strength of Offaly football is derived from the hard work of tiny villages that would be swallowed up in these arrangements. Any system could only work if these clubs are kept going as full adult clubs, with any additional structure introduced to work in harmony with this. A parish team in Killeigh Raheen for example would have to mean that these clubs could never go senior on their own – the parish team would be decimated if Raheen for example won the Intermediate championship on their own, as they look quite likely to do this year. In that situation Raheen would want to play senior by themselves, and the parish team would cease to exist. The same could apply in St. Broughans were Walsh Island to make the breakthrough, or Edenderry for that matter. Or to take another view on it, how is football in Croghan served when only two or three players are good enough to make a Rhode parish team?
(4) What of the clubs that are a parish by themselves? The whole point is that every player can play senior football if he’s good enough. How does this serve Seán Ryan of Birr or Conor Mahon of Kilcormac/Killoughey, two county panellists who would still have no access to senior football.
The truth is that a solution exists, and the remarkable thing is that the template is in place and serving no less a county than Kerry. They create districts, where Intermediate and Junior club players can play in the senior championships with their “Divisional” teams, and if the club is good enough to get promoted to senior by themselves, the divisional team can keep going since no one club forms the majority of players on any team.
Remarkably, these divisions already exist in Offaly, helpfully put in place by the church in the form of dioceses – no doubt the early archbishops foresaw the impending crisis in Offaly GAA. The names would need work, but if the divisions were (1) the parishes in the Killaloe diocese (along with Clareen of Ossory), (2) the parishes of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise (along with Lusmagh of Clonfert) (3) the parishes of the Meath Diocese and (4) the parishes of Kildare and Leighlin, we would have four very competitive teams. These four divisional teams, along with ten senior clubs, would form a county championship where all of Offaly’s best players were taking part. They would also ensure that the players would take it very seriously, as Kildare and Leighlin would offer the likes of Padraig Bracken and Ross Connor a much better chance of a county senior medal than their respective parish teams ever could. Some of the districts would seem a bit light, but when one factors in that a couple of extra teams would have to be relegated in order for this to work, most divisions would have a fair few clubs to pick from.
The format would be fairly simple – three senior championship groups, two of five clubs each and one of the four divisions, with the top six clubs and two divisions making the quarters. The divisions would have to be kept apart to ensure that a divisional team with very little time to prepare as a unit would not get caught out by a club team that has had much more training time together. Thus all the best players in Offaly would be taking part in the senior championship, and we would no longer have one of the few championships in Ireland where so many “senior” clubs take the field in May as 100/1 shots to lift the county title. (Your writer is also a bookmaker by profession, and in very few other counties would teams that are twelve or thirteen points worse than the front-runners – i.e. complete no-hopers of ultimate success - be senior grade).
Aside from the benefits to the senior championship, the creation of coherent amalgamations at minor and under-21 level would provide much better championships at those grades also, while creating real continuity in these new amalgamations. It would also create enthusiasm for the senior championship in areas where none has existed for some time. Finally, who’s to say that there aren’t players in all these junior clubs that would surprise us all if they made the step up? Good players are hard enough to come by without leaving in place a structure that can hide them. Perhaps in Clonbullogue there is a corner back capable of neutralising any corner forward in Ireland, but we’ll never know because he goes about his business quietly and never gets the chance to mark a Niall McNamee or Thomas Deehan to prove the point.
As with any change, there would be tough pills to swallow. Right now there are twelve senior clubs in Offaly, and realistically this would have to reduce to ten. Many clubs find senior status hard enough to obtain and hold already without raising the bar even further. Players from intermediate and junior clubs would have to spend a set amount of time with their divisional squad rather than just spending all their time with the club team (though this could be counteracted by the improved training that the players might get, with the knock on effect for the club side).
Above all, the whole point of creating these teams is to make them competitive. If they are competitive, they will win games and eventually one of them will win the championship. No doubt there would then be mutterings about how hard a county title is to win anyway without these amalgamations coming in, but the hope would be that the greater good would be understood by all. In Kerry this year, South Kerry are going for their fourth Kerry championship in a row, while it looks likely that three of the four semi finalists in 2007 will be divisional sides. One has to wonder how other clubs in Offaly would feel if the equivalent situation occurred here and it was Rhode along with Clonmacnoise, Leighlin and Killaloe in the county semi finals.
Ultimately, the hope has to be that they’d understand, simply because the standard of the county team would be brought on to a degree where being an Offaly supporter would be something to celebrate again.
As a final thought for the county board, this should be considered. When looking to improve football in the county, who should be the model? Parish amalgamations have been brought into place in Laois in recent years, and while obviously Laois have certainly had the upper hand over Offaly in this decade, another perspective would be that they have taken a string of highly talented minor teams and landed a solitary Leinster Championship as their only senior trophy. A Leinster title is not to be sniffed at, but is it really a sufficient harvest with such great underage success?
On the other hand, should we model ourselves on the kingpins of the game, the one team in the country who are competitive year in year out and for whom All Ireland success and only All Ireland success is the benchmark? It should be straightforward. No bad law please lads.
), Drumcullen and Clareen, I think it would work out okay - albeit the Killaloe section with Clareen, Crinkle, Killavilla and Carrig & Riverstown would be very decent. 
I knew you'd come around 
