Just looking across there at the Mayo View and I see he has proposed a new structure for the football league and championship. As regular readers of this column will know, I am not at all in favour of the so-called back door system. I have always believed that every great field game in the world deserves to have a knockout competition.

The old knockout system we had was way more preferable to this current, pro strong team, set up. However, the old system also had its flaws. The biggest flaw the old system had, was the amount of counties taking part. The Hurling crowd is way ahead of Football in this regard. You don't see 32 teams competing for the Liam McCarthy cup every year. Realism has to play a part. Roscommon are never going to win the Liam, so it's entirely appropriate that they don't enter that competition. Now, lets face it, Roscommon aren't going to win Sam any time soon either so why even enter the competition? I've reckoned for a long while now that there should be two competitions with 16 teams in each. Let two or three teams go up and down between the two competitions each year. People have, of course, disagreed with me on this (nothing new there!). Their point is that isn't it great that every county can entertain the romantic notion of winning Sam. Yah well, winning Sam is no easy matter and generally there's no room for romance, as we are only too painfully aware in this part of the world. A team playing in the second tier competition will, first of all have been given a reality check as regards their place in the pecking order and secondly, can strive to finish top and get promoted. No back doors, one defeat in the championship per team and that's it. Of course, I've also maintained that the league should be run parallel with the Championship, so that those who will miss the second and third games that losers play in the current championship, will get the chance to see their teams in action in the summer time. So, if your team was knocked out of the championship (whichever section!) on a particular Sunday evening, you could support them the following Saturday in the league. This would mean that inter-county players were guaranteed a lot of games, probably at least 8, during the summer months. Of course, if we did have inter-county players only playing between May and October, this would free up the rest of the year for Railway Cup, Club and College competitions. This brings me to another point. I believe the club finals should be moved from their St. Patrick's Day slot to make way for the Railway cup finals. The club competition is thankfully alive and kicking and can now survive away no bother without the oxygen of having the finals on the 17th March. The Railway Cup competition however, needs all the publicity it can get and deserves the full glare of the media on a high profile day. Isn't it amazing that the GAA have no problem promoting a hybrid game in conjunction with Coca-Cola, but talk about scrapping our inter- provincial competition? Anyways, that's enough of a rant from this Rossie for this month. Enjoy the Christmas and endure January and the FBD, then hopefully February will see the first steps taken to gain promotion out of Division 3.

Noel D. Walsh.