Opinion: It is time to take All-Ireland SFC quarter-finals away from Croke Park

The All-Ireland football quarter-finals forming two Croke Park double headers this weekend was as predictable as it is unimaginative.

The quarter-final stage was introduced to the Championship in 2001 and three of the four ties that year took place at provincial venues, with only Meath-Westmeath (draw and replay) fixed for Croke Park.

Dublin may not have been able to usurp Kerry back then but their supporters still reflect fondly on the two trips to Thurles to play them that year.

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There were 34,000 in Castlebar to see Galway avenge their Connacht semi-final defeat to Roscommon.
Derry also turned the tables on Tyrone in Clones having lost to them in Ulster earlier in the summer.

But the following year, with the Croke Park redevelopment essentially complete, the quarter-finals were all staged there, where they have effectively remained ever since.

Back in 2002, it was understandable. There was an awe factor to the new Croke Park, which was arguably the finest stadium in Europe at the time.

The qualifier system meant that new counties were breaking into the quarter-final stages. It made sense to expose the likes of Fermanagh, Sligo, Laois and Westmeath to Croke Park. Every county wanted a day out there.

And by 2007, every county had played at the new Croke Park at senior level at least once in hurling or football.

Then the novelty began to fade and it’s accelerated in recent years to the point that things have now come full circle. It’s time to take these games back to provincial venues as standalone fixtures. Because it works.

The recent Dublin-Mayo game at Hyde Park is just one example of why. A crowd of over 16,000 meant that the ground was mostly full and it’s hardly a coincidence that a good quality game was served up.

With the famous Kerry-Mayo All-Ireland semi-final replay in Limerick in 2014, the GAA stumbled across a successful template but has chosen not to use it with games at the back end of the Championship since.

To be fair, the combined attendances this coming weekend, particularly on Saturday, may make for healthy reading, but so would splitting the four games and fixing them for provincial venues. Indeed, the crowds may well even be bigger across the board, not to mind the boost it would give to local economies.

Bring the Dubs back to Thurles to play Galway. Let Roscommon and Armagh meet halfway in Cavan. Similarly with Derry and Kerry in somewhere like Castlebar. Put Louth-Donegal in Clones or Omagh.

All of the grounds would be largely full and with a tribal atmosphere without the mishmash of supporters coming and going that is typical of a double header.

Croke Park may be the jewel in the GAA’s crown and a facility that the Association should be proud of, but those are not good enough reasons to continually fix games there anymore. The venue is just too big a fit for the vast majority of fixtures it stages these days and the spectacle suffers as a result.

Even the concept of double headers itself, regardless of venue, is flawed. Last Saturday in Thurles underlined that. There may have been an official attendance of 30,509 for the All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals but never all at once.

Cork had the biggest support of the four counties and their game with Dublin, which threw in at 1.15pm, had a sterile atmosphere throughout. Once they had seen their side secure a five-point win, the vast majority of the Rebel hordes made their way back towards Leeside.

Clare-Wexford was supposed to be the main event, yet the ground was emptying as it was approaching and, naturally, there was a certain flatness to the game and occasion as a result.

There’s always an element of that for Croke Park double headers too and it’ll be evident this weekend again.

The obsession with double headers is certainly peculiar to the GAA. It isn’t even countenanced in any other major field sport. They just don’t work, certainly not at senior level anyway.

There may have been some merit to pairing senior and minor games but the GAA has now ended that practice. And they should do away with senior double headers too.

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