OPINION: Clubs resistant to any kind of change, and football suffers

Paul Fitzpatrick, in his Cavanman's Diary column, argues that Cavan clubs need to look at the bigger picture.

 

If you’re not familiar with the set-up of the Cavan All-County Football League this year, let me explain. The league is now split, effectively, into two separate competitions – the regular All-County League, which decides promotion and relegation, and a new Breffni League, which is, for all intents and purposes, a separate thing altogether.

The idea was that ordinary club players, who make up 98% of the playing population, would have competitive football while the county players are tied up. Clubs would still be able to call on their county men for nine league matches, plus potentially a final, and all of their championship games.

In the meantime, the rest of the club players would have a competition to keep them ticking over, a format which allows for the blooding of younger players and panellists in a less pressurised atmosphere. A win-win? No, it is not that easy.

There has been an outcry. At the recent Great Debate in the Hotel Kilmore, Seamus 'Banty’ McEnaney was scathing of the system and drew a vociferous round of applause from the crowd when he said as much. Some clubs did not bother even showing up for Breffni League games, or turned out a second string.

This week, an email popped into my inbox from a disgruntled supporter.

“At the start of the year the county board decided to again change the structure of the league. 

“I understand the clubs were opposed to the change but it was forced through,” read the note. 

“We had a decent league last year that was competitive and gave club players lots of games, we now have a farce that senior clubs are given walkovers and then fined for not fulfilling fixtures. Why did clubs do this, simply because these type of games are non-competitive and managers would get more out of a training session.”

So, it’s fair to say that the Breffni League system has been a failure, despite the best intentions. What is most galling about this is that it was an honest attempt to address a situation.

If it was forced through against the wishes of the clubs - and I am unsure that is the case - maybe there was a reason; can the clubs of the county be trusted to make the right decision?

Bear in mind the reaction to Peter Quinn’s report a couple of years ago. The county chairman, Tom Reilly, tasked Quinn with examining Cavan football and drafting a report recommending key areas in which things could be improved.

A former GAA President, Quinn was the right man for that job – widely-respected in GAA circles, he is far enough away so as not to get caught up in any club parochialism and yet is very familiar with this county, coming as he does from Teemore where, when he was growing up, the community looked towards west Cavan rather than the rest of south Fermanagh and beyond.

Quinn put together a group and, beginning in February 2011, at a point when this county had won three Ulster titles at all football levels since 1975, they consulted a wide range of stakeholders over more than a year before producing a comprehensive report, which ran to almost 20,000 words.

The key recommendation was that the structure of club football needed to change, particularly the championship. Read what Quinn reported.

“We got very strong feed-back,” he said, “that there were far too many teams playing senior football in the county. 

'The general view was that this was not good for the overall standard of football in Cavan (that was the single most consistent view expressed to us during the entire consultations). 

“Only a few teams have any realistic chance of winning either the Senior League or the Championship - '...more like four than 14...’, was one comment and '...junior standard players playing in the senior league and championship...’ was another; only six have won the senior championship in more than 20 years. 

“Rightly or wrongly, the majority opinion was that the current situation and the current structures detract from the value of club football as a nursery for county football, as well as from the development of potentially good players. The ultimate result is that clubs in Cavan are losing out, just as much as the county team is.”

The board acted, and immediately proposed a new structure based on Quinn’s recommendations. The new format would have cut the number of senior clubs from 14 to nine, with the championship bulked out by seven amalgamations. The clubs agreed to this (there was no “forcing through” needed in this case) initially, and look what happened next.

There were private meetings of chairmen, a general stink was raised and the plans were shelved. The board erred in trying to speed up the process - maybe it should have been phased in to lessen the shock for clubs of losing their precious status as the 12th or 13th or 14th best of 14 senior clubs - but everyone minded their own little patch and the whole thing fell flat.

The net result was embarrassing; having asked a top GAA man to painstakingly examine the problems and propose a solution (reducing the number of senior clubs), the clubs of this county decided to increase the number, from 14 to 17.

“Very clearly,” Quinn wrote, “there was a strongly-held view was that Cavan needs more, stronger club teams and fewer weak clubs.”

He also wrote the following, which is particularly relevant to the current Breffni League debacle:

“Too many games are still postponed for reasons, which are, at best, flimsy - weddings, concerts, parties, refusing to play without county players etc.; that disrupts the entire fixtures programme. 

“The acceptable reasons for postponing games and depriving other players of the opportunity to play, should be set out clearly and enforced rigorously.”

That last line goes to the core of the issue. The Breffni League provides these 'other players’ the 'opportunity to play’, and, in my opinion, is the ideal solution. 

Unfortunately, as we saw when the championship plan ran aground, our clubs seem resistant to change.

If anyone has a better idea, I’d love to hear it. Let’s get the debate started once again.