Kildare GAA convention told club championships in dire need of restructuring

There were calls for a restructuring of the Kildare club championships at the Kildare GAA County Convention on Thursday night, with one club delegate stating to the crowd that the time has come to revise the competitions.

Clane GAA representative Frank Duffy told the convention at the Osprey Hotel that the the county board 'have to come up a system that gives us more competitive matches', citing the fact that there were 11 games in the Kildare Senior Football Championship which saw teams beaten by 15 points or more over the last two seasons.

The structure of the championships currently sees 16 teams competing at senior level; 16 teams at intermediate level and there are 11 clubs competing in the Junior Championship. The next step down is the Reserve A Championship, though that has been dominated by the second teams of both Sarsfields and Moorefield in recent years, and the winners of that competition are not granted promotion to the Junior Championship, as is the case in many other counties.

Duffy pointed out the failure for Kildare clubs to be competitive at provincial level given the structure of the championship in the county, outlining how this year's Junior Championship winners, Ballymore Eustace, were outside the top 32 teams in the county, while they played Erin Rovers of Offaly, who were ranked 17th in their own county due to the fact that the Offaly Senior and Intermediate Championships have just eight teams in each of them.

Duffy gave a breakdown of other county's championship structures, detailing how outside of Dublin and Meath, Kildare has the most senior and intermediate teams.

"I honestly believe that unless we lower the number of teams in our Senior and Intermediate Championships we can virtually forget about any Kildare team reaching an All-Ireland final, never mind winning it," said Duffy.

Continuing on, Duffy suggested that the winners of the Reserve A Championship be promoted to the Junior Championship due to the dominance of the same teams at the latter stages of that competition each year.

Chairman Ger Donnelly said before Duffy spoke that he was welcome to bring the issue forward to the meeting of the county board in February.