A tiered structure will be introduced to the All-Ireland SFC next year after winning three-quarters of the vote at Special Congress today.
It means that teams in Division Three and Four of the Allianz League will not be permitted to take part in the All-Ireland qualifiers unless they reach their provincial final.
Instead, they will take part in an as yet unnamed secondary competition which will be played on a knockout basis.
A separate motion was also passed which means that counties’ status in tier one or two will be determined by their standings at the end of next year’s League rather than the 2019 competition.
Despite strong contributions from in particular Antrim delegate Ciaran McCavana and Sean Campion from Carlow, both of whom spoke against the tier two proposal, it passed comfortably with 75.5% of the vote, well over the required 60%.
With regard to the profile of the now incoming competition, McCavana cited what he felt were empty promises following the introduction of the Joe McDonagh Cup last year.
He said: “We were promised this, we were promised the moon and the stars. There’s more coverage of Marty Morrissey’s clothes.
“What child in their back garden ever dreamt of lifting a B competition?
“People talk about the bottom 16. Folks, you need to have a bit of a reality check. There’s a gap between the top four and the rest.”
McCavana also expressed concern that dividing the county scene in this manner would fastrack the possibility of the higher ranking teams going professional in the future.
Jack Devaney (Down) and Tom Boyle (Fermanagh) expressed strong reservations too while Carlow delegate Campion commented: “We all know how hard it is to get sponsorship as a small county. What company so going to sponsor a team in a second tier competition?
“We have first hand knowledge with the Joe McDonagh, the promises very similar. Semi-finals and finals televised, an All Star team.
“The All Star team was a botch job with counties being asked to nominate players. Imagine Tipperary or Kilkenny or Galway being asked to nominate players for their All Star team?
“There was to be a monetary offer for a training camp. It didn’t happen. What was offered was poor and an insult to two teams and an insult to the name of Joe McDonagh.”
GAA president John Horan countered that he had contacted RTE Head of Sport Declan McBennett ahead of the vote and had been told that he was “confident it would happen” with regard to live television coverage of the final of the competition.
The GPA have been against the motion in light of the Fixtures Review Task Force’s report that is expected next month and its chairman Seamus Hickey said that the proposal fell short of player expectations for more games, saying that they “face the prospect of a two-game competition again”.
Horan’s predecessors Sean Kelly and Nickey Brennan spoke in favour of motion, Kelly having been president when the Tommy Murphy Cup, which is very similar to this latest proposal, was introduced.
“Every year there’ll be 30 extra players who’ll be able to say I’ve an All-Ireland medal,” said Kelly.
Wicklow’s Martin Coleman read a message forwarded to them from the county’s GPA rep, who said the players were in favour of the proposal.
He said: “This group of players are pleading for support. I, on behalf of these players, plead with you to pass this motion.”
John Murphy (Sligo), Tom Farrell (Westmeath), Pat Toner (Louth), Denis Holmes (Limerick), Terence Boyle (Leitrim) were among those who also spoke in favour.
There are a number of new football playing rules that will come into effect too, with the inside mark and sin bin passed, along with a motion for kickouts to be taken from the 20-metre line.
There were misgivings about teams time-wasting when down to 14 men due to having a player in the sin bin though David Hassan, chairman of the Standing Committee on Playing Rules, refuted this based on the findings when the rule was in play in this year’s League.
He said: “There is no evidence that players will waste time. We analysed every division and what we found was that the amount of ball-in-play time sits at around 52% throughout a game. There was no difference when a player was in the sin bin relative to when they were not.”
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