Colm Collins critical of Munster decision to separate Cork and Kerry in football championship

Irish Times

4 days ago

Colm Collins has heavily criticised the decision of Munster Council to seed both
Cork
and
Kerry
in next year's provincial football championship. The former Clare manager and member of Jim Gavin's
Football Review Committee
also suggested that the FRC model be used to reform football championship structures.
At Thursday night's meeting, Munster delegates took the decision that the top two counties, judged by league standing, should be drawn in the semi-finals and kept apart – on the basis that it would boost gate receipts by optimising provincial attendances between the two most successful counties, who would have an enhanced chance of reaching the final.
It was ratified for a three-year period beginning in 2026.
Kerry have been the only Munster county in the league's top flight for what will be 10 years next season. Cork finished this year in fifth place in Division Two. Next came Clare, third in Division Three.
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'The Munster Championship is a complete joke,' said Collins, 'in the sense that you've got a Division One team, probably the best Division One team, playing counties that are below them. Munster Council, in their profound wisdom, have decided to give Cork a leg up the ladder by seeding them.
'The point is that the Munster finals haven't been competitive, but they're not going to solve it by doing this. I wouldn't mind if there were two Division One teams in Munster and they were consistently doing well.
'I don't know how some of these delegates will go back and face their football squads after voting for this.'
This brings to an end 35 years of the open draw in Munster. The late Noel Walsh campaigned to introduce the structure for 1991 on the basis that it was demanding too much of smaller, less successful counties to have to beat both Cork and Kerry if they were to win the provincial title.
At the time, Cork were All-Ireland champions. In the first year, Limerick reached a first final since 1965 and in the second, Clare won a first title for 75 years.
It was later tweaked so that the provincial finalists would be seeded for the following year but not kept apart. Collins's argument is that the decline of Cork has had far more of an impact on the championship than the open draw.
'Tipperary have won Munster more recently than Cork,' he said, 'and it's a long time since they have come close to filling a ground in Munster.'
Although Cork took the eventual winners to extra-time in the Munster semi-final, they were beaten by 11 in the All-Ireland round-robin fixture and there is little sign that the Cork public are swinging behind their footballers, who haven't attracted more than 20,000 to a match with Kerry since 31,836 attended the 2017 provincial final in Killarney.
Collins would love to see a high-powered committee, along the lines of the FRC, review and make recommendations on future structures for the football championship.
'It would be great to see a committee in charge that would have teeth and would be allowed to review championship structures and that politics and vested interests by the provinces would be prevented from blocking proper development.
'It has to be a priority at this point to get rid of these mismatches. There is no point in having one of the powerhouses, a Division One team taking on a Division Four team in the provincial championships in the name of keeping these championships.'