Restructure Senior Leagues.

I'm looking at the league tables and wondering, could the leagues be structured better in order to give teams more consistently competitve games and, in turn, improve the standard of football.

With 16 teams in a league, there's a big gap in standard between top and bottom that usually results in games that serve little use apart from scoring difference to the top team and moral sapping hammerings for the bottom team.

I'd suggest revising the leagues to four divisions with ten teams in the first three divisions and eleven in the fourth. In divisions 1,2 & 3, play home and away. This leaves 18 games (up 3 from present) at a broadly similar standard.

In division 4, with eleven teams in it, I'd suggest after one round of games, split the league again. The top six play each other in another round (15 games). The bottom 5 play each other in another round (14 games). While the number of games here are down by 1 & 2 respectively, the games might be more competitive.  Maybe Ardclough will move up again some day increasing numbers. The split serves to keep the teams at the lower end competing for a trophy. Nothing beats winning an oul trophy.

As I said, the goal is to make the leagues more competitive and improve the overall standard in the county as a result. Thoughts?

Here's how the leagues would look based on current standings:

Div 1.

1 Sarsfields
2 Moorefield
3 Naas
4 Celbridge
5 Athy
6 Confey
7 Johnstownbridge
8 Carbury
9 Monasterevan
10 Clane


Div 2.

11 Round Towers
12 Allenwood
13 Castledermot
14 Leixlip
15 Kilcock
16 St Kevin's
17 St Laurence's
18 Raheens
19 Straffan
20 Maynooth

Div 3.

21 Rathangan
22 Ellistown
23 Ballymore Eustace
24 Kill
25 Two Mile House
26 Nurney
27 Eadestown
28 Clogherinkoe
29 Sallins GAA Club
30 Caragh

Div 4.

31 Robertstown
32 Suncroft GFC
33 Castlemitchell GFC
34 Ballyteague
35 Milltown
36 Rheban
37 Grangenolvan
38 Cappagh
39 Kilcullen
40 Rathcoffey
41 Ballykelly

Interesting proposal you make. While I wouldnt disagree I'd adjust the league as it is. I think the fact that there is no league semi finals makes the competition meaningless for loads of teams after around 9 or 10 games. Teams are in a position where they are safe and no they can't make top 2.
I'd prefer to see top 2 teams make home semi finals with 3rd home to 6th and 4th home to 5th in two quarter finals.

Another problem is teams expectations for any given league game are dependent on whom they have available. Particularly those further down the food chain. TMH for instance are a different team with Kelly and Sherry for instance than without, but Sarsfields have the squad to cope when say Chalky and Smithy are tied up. Don't think the solution to this is as straight forward as county managers won't be keen on releasing players.

Leave well enough alone IMO. Although I would get rid of the finals.

Bring back semi finals for league 1 and 2?

The SF leagues have been a bone of frustration for me over the past few years in their current format.
For me there are too many meaningless games, namely because of the differences in standards.
Personally I would split the divisions into 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A and 3B...that would leave eight teams in each section of each division and while it would not be feasible to give clubs just seven league games for the season on the back of this, playing on a home and away basis would mean 14 games per team.
I would also bring back semi-finals too...whether that be that the top two in 1A and IB advancing to Division 1 finals, with those said 1B teams also guaranteed promotion to IA, with the bottom two IA teams demoted...same format for Divisions 2 and 3. Or you could just have IA, IB, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B finals between the top two in each...both promoted to replace bottom two in next tier up?
If this was to be introduced in the morning for next year then you could use this year's final standings to determine who plays in what division.
It's a tricky one to find the right structure, in that club players will want games but also you don't want to deminish the standard of the competition by having too many games that may become meaningless.
Maybe with the above structure you would hopefully have fewer teams in each section but with far more to play for at either end, in that you know that if you are say fifth in the table that the team at the bottom in eight might still have something to play for going into the last few games because the standard should be far closer across the board, whereas currently after about ten games most teams already know their fate.

Cilldara_2000 wrote:

Leave well enough alone IMO. Although I would get rid of the finals.

Why leave it alone? Do you think that the current set up would improve the overall standard of football in the county? Do you think the above suggestion would have no impact on the standards of football?

The current format has been there for a number of years. I'm not proposing change just for change. The trial of putting Senior B teams in Div 3 a number of years ago was a good idea in theory but didn't really work in practice.

I think its worth trying out a proposal like this for a year or two to see if it increases the competitiveness of the latter stages of the league.

I can't see the likes of Ballyteague and Castlemitchell agreeing to a restructure like this. You're essentially relegating them even though they both gained promotion this year. Straffan for instance just missed out on promotion to Division 1 and they were a Junior team last year, it's not at all uncompetitive IMO. OK, Larries being in Division 2 this year was not ideal, they handed out some big beatings but that won't be the case next year. I'd leave it be.

League semi-finals would be a good idea in theory, but the teams who qualify will most likely want their county players available when there's a trophy on the line.

With 3 games to go in S.F.L. Div 1 this year the following teams were fighting for the 2nd place ( Sarsfields had more or less secured their place in the final ). Moorefield, Naas, Athy, Celbridge and JTB.

I think thats fairly competitive.

Semi finals don't work, particularly if Kildare exit the championship early, even now everyone is waiting for the club championship to start and the league finals have not being played.

Taibi wrote:

I can't see the likes of Ballyteague and Castlemitchell agreeing to a restructure like this. You're essentially relegating them even though they both gained promotion this year. Straffan for instance just missed out on promotion to Division 1 and they were a Junior team last year, it's not at all uncompetitive IMO. OK, Larries being in Division 2 this year was not ideal, they handed out some big beatings but that won't be the case next year. I'd leave it be.
....

RE Ballyteague & Castlemitchell. Yes, they would suffer in terms of not being promoted for a season. Not sure if there would be a way around this. Other teams would "suffer" in terms of non promotion & moving down a tier in theory. A once off hit on such a restructure.

In terms of the Larries comment. I think you're incorrect. Every year, there are 2/3 teams that have those results. The two promoted & Maynooth ran off from the others. The gap between the upper and lower end of Div 2 is perhaps the greatest. And yet, the two who go up to Div 1. tend to struggle the majority of the time.

Gaa1928 wrote:

With 3 games to go in S.F.L. Div 1 this year the following teams were fighting for the 2nd place ( Sarsfields had more or less secured their place in the final ).  Moorefield, Naas, Athy, Celbridge and JTB.

......

Look at it this way. If we take a look at the results of the top ten that would go into Div 1. against the six that would move down a tier, you will see a big gap.

I just looked at the results. Of the 60 games (6 lower teams versus the other 10), here's the results.

Played 60
Won 7  Drew 4 Lost 49
(And 3 of these wins came in round 1 when the cobwebs are still there)

The margin of defeat:

13 Losses 1-4 points
14 Losses 5-7 points
22 Losses 8+ points

You will find a similar gap between the teams in Div 2. The point is there's too big a gap between teams in a league of 16. Smaller leagues would/should create greater competition throughout a season. I also think it would improve the standard of football. If you moved up from Div 2 or 3, you would be much better prepared to stay in the next division.

Senior leagues are fine. Most matches are very competitive. No matter what way you restructure them you will have a few teams taking heavy beatings. You will have teams not going well from year to year and they will ship heavy beatings and get relegated. Div 2 for example this year was very competitive apart from Robertstown and they got relegated. Raheens and Larries were promoted but they won a lot of matches by only a few points. I think leave it be and don't change the senior leagues for the sake of it. Semi-finals would be good if they could be fitted into the fixture list though.

Frankel,I'm certainly not suggesting change for the sake of it (as I've mentioned in every post).

I've also asked, would the standards of football improve and the competitiveness improve. That's the only reason I'm making the proposal.

To counter your suggestion that Div 2 was competitive. I've taken the results of the top 4 teams aginst the other 12 (as they would have moved into a different tier as in the opening post). Here are their results:

Played 48
Won 38
Drew 4
Lost 6

Margins:
9 Wins 1-4 points
8 Wins 5-7 points
21 Wins 8+ points (can only blame Robertstown for 4 of them)

This is broadly similar to the Div 1 results of the bottom 6 against top 10.

In both current Div 1 & 2. The higher ranked team had an 80% win rate, circa 40% by 8 points or more. The lower ranked team had approx a 10% chance of getting a point from the game. Not competitve.

Leaving Div 1 aside. Do you not think the Div 2 & 3 leagues would be ferociously competitive?
I couldn't guess with any accuracy who would be in the top or bottom 2/3 of the proposed Div 2. The Div 3 would be a tough call too.
I'd say we could all have a fairly good stab at who will be involved in the top 2/3 in the present Div 2 for next year.

look you make some good points but I just feel you will find teams taking good beatings no matter what way you restructure the leagues. For example Nurney hammered Sallins by about 15 to 16 points in the league but sallins beat them in the championship. Also it is no harm teams playing other clubs that are maybe of a little higher level.

umpireonditch wrote:

Interesting proposal you make. While I wouldnt disagree I'd adjust the league as it is. I think the fact that there is no league semi finals makes the competition meaningless for loads of teams after around 9 or 10 games. Teams are in a position where they are safe and no they can't make top 2.
I'd prefer to see top 2 teams make home semi finals with 3rd home to 6th and 4th home to 5th in two quarter finals.

Decent idea. What I'd say is there has to be a carrot to going through this. From experience, back when there was semi-finals in Div 2. The promoted teams didn't give a toss once promoted. Job done.

Frankel wrote:

look you make some good points but I just feel you will find teams taking good beatings no matter what  way you restructure the leagues. For example Nurney hammered Sallins by about 15 to 16 points in the league but sallins beat them in the championship. Also it is no harm teams playing other clubs that are maybe of a little higher level.

I know where you're coming from.

I would reduce the number of teams down to 14 in Div 1 & 2. With 13 in Div 3. This avoid the need for home and away games. As we know there has been incidents in a number of games this yr that may have blown up again had the teams have to play again in the league. I think league semi finals are a good idea but we need to make them worth a teams while or else they are meaningless

How about top 2 teams play final in Div 1-3 as per normal. In Div 2 & 3 teams 3 to 6 play off with the winner also going up? 3 promoted and 3 relegated each season?