The Semi-Final Replay Fiasco
And How To Fix the ‘Infinite Replays’ Loophole
(Written during the 2014 All-Ireland Football Championship)
Two arguments have been rolled out by the GAA since the decision to play the Mayo v Kerry All-Ireland Semi-Final replay in Limerick was made:
- We have to leave Croke Park free for a possible Dublin v Donegal Replay
- We have to leave Croke Park free in case of a 2nd Mayo v Kerry Draw
“Croke Park is not able to be utilized on Saturday September 6th as the GAA need to keep that date free in the event of a second replay being required for Kerry and Mayo or if next Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final between Donegal and Dublin finishes in a draw.”
Leaving It Free For an Hypothetical Dublin V Donegal Replay:
The GAA are letting a fixture that does not exist and may never exist dictate how they will manage a game that does now exist, i.e. the Mayo v Kerry Replay.
Leaving It Free In Case Of a 2nd Draw:
Again, another hypothetical game. The GAA have used these two imagined scenarios as their arguments for fixing the game for Limerick. So in that spirit let me do the same:
What If they (Mayo and Kerry) do indeed draw again AND Dublin and Donegal draw? What does the GAA do then!!?
“Ah that’s very unlikely to happen” I hear you say. But is it that much more unlikely than a second Mayo Kerry Draw (which will this time, presumably, go to Extra Time if tied after full time)? The GAA seem to think this scenario is so likely to happen that they have fixed an All-Ireland Semi-final replay in Limerick after all!
Simplest Solution: Ditch The Replays
Or at least limit them to one!
Current Official Rules around drawn games: Rule 3: Time
“3.4 (a)A Committee-in-Charge may decide prior to
the start of a Competition that if a Game in
all or some specific Round(s) ends in a draw, Extra Time shall be played.”“3.4 (c) Extra Time shall be obligatory in the case of a further draw in a Replay”
Having no rules limiting the amount of replays possible is a serious Rules loophole that the GAA have never had to deal with because of the unlikelihood of multiple draws occurring. Well, I say never, but of course there is precedence here. The 1991 Dublin vs Meath saga went to four games after the first three games were drawn, two after extra time. The Leinster final had to be postponed.
What if Mayo and Kerry draw another 2 or 3 times?
If this happens again the All-Ireland final will have to be postponed. So maybe the GAA should fix the final to be in October anymore just in case there is a hypothecical set of draws in any given year that might force the game to be postponed!? I’m being facicious here of course but is this argument any less valid than the GAA’s above arguments for holding the game in Limerick? It’s essentially the same argument, using a hypothetical set of results to dictate real fixtures.
The solution here, of course, is to not allow this to happen, to completely remove the possibility of multiple draws occurring.
Why do we need draws!?
The whole concept of drawn games in a cup competition is a bit of an old-fashioned one. Would the World Cup Final be postponed a week to allow a semi-final replay!? Would the Super Bowl be put back a week to allow a replay? The answer of course is no.
Replays put an unnecessary strain on the players. Asking Kerry and Mayo to play another game of such intensity and physicality 6 days later is not fair on the players. Yes, the Dublin v Meath saga of 1991 was truly memorable but due to the strain of that year Meath started that year’s All-Ireland Final with only 3 injury-free players. Ask any of those Meath players would they rather have played a 4 game marathon in the first round of the Leinster championship or have an All-Ireland medal and I am sure all would say the latter.
Either do away with replays altogether or limit them to one
I’m not completely against replays. But to allow for an infinite number of replays to occur is just farcical. I mean hypothetically under the current GAA rules, Mayo and Kerry could draw this fixture 20, 50 or 100 times. How does holding the 2014 final in 2018 sound to you!? If we must keep replays then at least limit them to a single occurrence. That would at least eliminate the GAA’s 2nd argument above about having the game in Limerick in case of a 2nd draw.
And to eliminate the GAA’s first argument? Hold the fixtures (limited to one replay) in plenty of time before the final. Here is a hypothetical fixture list with our new ‘1 replay limit’ rule in place:
Mayo v Kerry: 16th August
Dublin v Donegal: 24th August
American Football Game on in Croke Park! 30th August
Mayo v Kerry Replay: 31st August
Dublin v Donegal Replay: 6th September
Hurling Final 7th of September
Football Final 14th of September (bring it forward a week)
This gives everyone a 2 week break in case of a replay and we can be 100% sure no extra replays will take place so we can bring the final forward a week. As a side note having an American Football Game in Croke Park at the busiest time of the year is absolute madness, and the GAA would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for those pesky replays! I would as it happens prefer that the entire championship be revamped, and you can read about that here if you wish.
How to Decide Drawn GAA games
I suppose if I am going to sound the death-knell on replays I better figure out how we can end these games. Firstly extra time is to be played in the event of a drawn game, I think we can all agree on this. If they are still level after that then we could go with one of several options:
- Penalty Shoot-out — We have goals and goal-keepers so why not use them?
- Free-Kick Shoot-out — We have high posts so we could use them instead, similar to how they decide drawn games in Rugby. This might be seen as a more amenable solution to the GAA purists than a penalty shoot-out would, as free-taking is valued as more of a classic GAA skill than penalty-taking is.
- Sudden Death Overtime — The teams keep playing extra periods of Extra Time with the aim of scoring a certain amount of points before their opponents. We could, for example, say the first team to score 4 points wins.
- One-on-one shoot-out — similar to ice hockey we could have players try to score a goal (or point), not from the penalty spot, but soloing in from the 45, either against just a goalie or a goalie and one defender.
These are just 4 possible solutions, any of which would be a neater solution than the current infinite replays “solution”.
What do you think? Should we get rid of draws altogether or limit them to 1? What do you think of the GAA fixing the game for Limerick based on hypothetical future scenarios?
