The CEO of the Dublin GAA County Board is to call for a restructuring of the All Ireland Football Championship.  John Costelloe will put forward a plan at next week’s Dublin County convention which would see the scrapping of the four provincial titles and their replacement with four conferences or geographical groups.
The plan would be to have eight teams in each conference and a more consistent schedule of games for teams progressing through the Championship.
The ‘Conference’ idea is very familiar and succesful in US Sport where both the NFL and Major League Baseball are structured along those lines.
“As the Championship currently stands, too many counties face long gaps between games,” said Costelloe speaking in advance of the convention.
“There is an imbalance between the number of games counties play when they go on
a winning streak from opening round to All-Ireland Sunday.
“We always have to look at the marketing of our games, rewarding our die-hard supporters with a structured season as in other sports, as well as targeting new audiences.”