THE problem with the two championship reform proposals is that they do not respect the hard-working GAA communities of Ireland.

Cromwell said, “To hell, or Connacht”. In that vein, the first proposal is that several counties would be forced to emigrate from their provinces, including one being thrown out of Ulster into Connacht. You can be sure the GAA will not place a refugee order on Tyrone and that Dublin will not be forced out of Leinster. Banish Fermanagh or Carlow and the likes, sure nobody gives a damn about them.

Each Frankenstein province of eight teams will then have two groups of four for a round-robin phase. The winner of each group will get a place in the provincial final. The second and third placed teams will progress to round one of the All-Ireland series. The fourth team in each group will be relegated to… wait for it…….the Tommy Murphy Cup (rebranded as the Tailteann Cup). Zero respect for the smaller counties, who are an afterthought in this plan.

The second option is a better one, as seeding is based on league performance. In this plan, only the teams that finish top of Division Three and Four would gain entry to the Sam Maguire. The bottom 16 go into in the Tailteann Cup.

The provincial championships are retained but are standalone and have nothing to do with the new championship. Basically, the Ulster Championship would become the McKenna Cup, Connacht the FBD, etc.

The jewel in Ulster’s crown is our championship, which has seen a series of great games this year, including heart-stoppers between Derry and Donegal, Monaghan and Armagh and Monaghan and Tyrone. The other problem with proposal two is that there are no guarantees of respect for the second tier.

In 2007 and 2008, I helped out with Antrim. In both years, the team reached the Tommy Murphy final, losing to Wicklow in a minor classic in 2007 before beating them in 2008.

The competition was treated as an embarrassment by the GAA. The final was played on All-Ireland quarter-final day at 12.15pm. Only the quarter-finalists could drive their coaches inside the stadium, dropping off and picking up the squad and kit at the door of their dressing rooms. The Tommy Murphy finalists meanwhile had to park outside and carry all their gear in.

The teams and run-down occupied a page of the program and were set out in small print, exactly like the mini sevens played at half time. They were allocated the juvenile dressing rooms, where it was a squeeze. Meanwhile, the main dressing rooms were reserved for the four quarter-finalists. These are very large state of the art rooms with a huge warm-up area and all manner of facilities.

In fairness, there were no signs on the water faucets saying “Not to be used by Tommy Murphy teams” and the players were allowed to use the toilets. The All-Ireland finalists each receive over 100,000 euro. The Tommy Murphy Cup finalists got zilch. No wonder it was labelled the Tommy Cooper Cup.

Sean Kelly’s ingenious plan (added to by Jimmy McGuinness), with some extra tweaks, would be the best possible reform. It touches every base and would create a vibrant two-tier championship. The GAA needs to be radical, and this is the time to do it, since everyone accepts that the current system is wholly dysfunctional, with the vast public humiliation of Leitrim leaving us all feeling queasy.

This plan puts it on a plate. It links the league, provincial championships, and All-Ireland series, and establishes a vibrant second tier All-Ireland Championship.

The 16 top teams would compete for the Sam Maguire. The next 16 would compete in the second tier, which I would call the Páidí Ó Sé, or the Kevin Heffernan, something with oomph. Something that affords respect to the teams competing for it.

The top six teams in Division One and the two promoted from Division Two would make up the top eight seeds. The two relegated from Division One would be seeded 9 and 10. Number 11 would be the third placed team in Division Two. Number 12 would be the winner of the second tier All-Ireland from the previous year. The final four places in the top 16 would be reserved for the provincial championship winners.

If the provincial winners are already seeded in the top 11 via their league position (a likely enough outcome), then the top 15 league teams plus the previous year’s tier two winners would make up the 16 teams in the race for Sam.

The way it would all work is this: The provincial championships would be standalone tournaments run off quickly. At their conclusion, the All-Ireland series would begin. It would be knockout, starting with the last 16.

Seed one would play seed 16. Seed two seed 15 and so on. My proposal is that for the first group of 16 game, the lower seed gets home venue. Let’s say for example that Derry make it in at number 16. They would play Dublin in Celtic Park. Or if Offaly had their 16 spot, they would get Kerry in Tullamore.

These would be enormously popular events. Top teams coming to a venue near you. The town packed. A carnival atmosphere. Crucially, the smaller county would feel that it is (finally and at long last) being shown respect.

The 16th seed or the 15th seed might be beaten, but what a prize to fight for and what an occasion to savour. The same would apply to the second tier of 16.

From the quarter-final stage on, the Páidí Ó Sé games would be curtain-raisers to the Sam Maguire games, ensuring big crowds. The finals would be accorded equal respect, played one after the other in Croke Park.

There is absolutely no need for a minor final to be played before the senior final.

In my proposal, the Páidí Ó Sé would be played first, say at 2pm. Same parade. Same anthem and all the rest. Then, at 4pm, the Sam Maguire. The Páidí Ó Sé would have the same perks, same razmatazz, same ticket allocation. The prize for the Páidí Ó Sé winners would not only be the trophy bearing that fabled name, but also the same team holiday and a guaranteed place in the following year’s Sam Maguire.

The league would become ultra-competitive, with the option of drifting through it gone, since you could drop out of the top tier, or make it into the top tier for the All-Ireland series andor the lower your position, the more difficult your opponent in the first knockout game.

If you could make it halfway up the seeding, your round of 16 games would be against a team next to you in the league.

If Carlow can get a crack at Kildare at home in the first round of 16 or Leitrim can get Fermanagh, this is a serious incentive to put in the hard work. The prize of an All-Ireland final in front of 82,000 people, on live telly, for the Páidí Ó Sé finalists is enough to set any young man’s pulse racing.

If we were starting from scratch, three tiers would probably be preferable, but culturally, an adjustment to two tiers is difficult enough and as the Tommy Murphy showed, teams banished to the bargain basement hate it and show little interest, albeit that a crucial feature in this fiasco was the contempt shown by the GAA for the competition.

For these reasons, proposal one above is a total cop out. The reasoning behind it is to provide more competitive games for Division Four teams and to incentivise them to be better in the longer term. But exactly the same reasoning applies to Division Three. No Division Three team has a hope in hell of winning Sam.

On any given day, a Division Four team can beat one from Division Three. Wexford could beat Sligo, Louth could beat Clare. Antrim could beat Limerick and so on. It is blatantly obvious that a properly respected second tier championship would genuinely allow teams to compete and improve, which is why proposal two is a better one. The problem with it is that the provincial championship becomes irrelevant and will die the death.

The plan above covers all bases. Players will like it. It will be genuinely competitive. Every game is incentivised. The crucial part is that every county is shown equal respect, down to the two finals being played at Croke Park on the same day and the people of those counties getting the same ticket allocation. It is high time the GAA began living up to its ideals.