Two alternatives to central council’s doomed “Tommy Murphy Cup” proposal

There will be no Tommy Murphy 2.0.

The GAA central council's finely crafted, long deliberated and utterly detested "B Championship" reform of the football All-Ireland is destined to go down in flames at Congress this weekend. If it even gets to the voting floor in Carlow. More likely central council will pull the motion from the agenda in the face of huge opposition from the county boards and county players of Division 4, not to mention the thousands of fans who remember not attending the much-maligned Tommy Murphy Cup before it was put out of its misery in 2008, at the ripe old age of five. So we can safely assume there will be no B Championship featuring the eight Division 4 in the summer 2017. However we can also assume that all the talk and debate and submissions on the reform of the football championship hinted that a very sizeable proportion of the association are hungry for change. Here are two alternative Championship restructures that will be voted upon Saturday. Motion 56 (Roscommon) Rather than just condemning the bottom eight league teams to the B Championship, the proposal calls for half the counties to enter the reincarnated Tommy Murphy Cup. Likely to be as popular as an Adidas Dublin jersey among voters, this doomed motion specifies that once the provincial championships are finished, the competition will divide into two separate competitions. In its first year the new championship will see the eight provincial finalists and the eight highest ranked teams in that year's Allianz Football League (not including provincial finalists where there is a doubling-up) making up Tier 1 (Sam Maguire). From its second year, the winner of the previous year's Tier 2 competition will also be included in the Tier 1 competition, along with the seven highest ranked league sides. Everyone else will be condemned to the B Championship. Best of luck with that, Roscommon. Motion 57 (Carlow) This has more legs than Roscommon's plan but will likely be scuppered by the fact it (rightly) takes some degree of importance away from the provincial championships. After the four provinces run off their competitions, this motions suggests the All-Ireland series takes on a new seeded format based on the previous year's provincial championships and that year's Allianz League results. The All-Ireland series would then take place with Pot (Division) 3 and 4 seeds playing in Round 1, before meeting Pot 2 teams in Round 2 and then the winners eventually facing Pot 1 teams in Round 3. The remaining eight teams after those three rounds would advance to an open draw All-Ireland quarter-finals. This would bring a more logical structure to the All-Ireland series and, probably, reduce the risk of what currently happens in the qualifiers, where horrendous mismatches see smaller counties annihilated. Better, but probably not good enough. Look forward to another 12 months of long deliberation and fine crafting before we get another utterly detested suggestion.