All-Ireland Cup - eh!?

This is the flipping mentalest competition I've ever come across. First the team in 3rd in Ireland and Northern Ireland play a two legged qualifying round to see who gets in... even though the teams in 6th and the team that was relegated in 12th qualify automatically from Northern Ireland, and the 4th place team in Ireland qualify automatically ahead of the 3rd place team. This is played during Ireland preseason, so the NI team is fully fit and the Republic team is not. Then I, newly promoted to the Irish Premier Division, play a one-off qualifying round at THE NATIONAL STADIUM with the team that came 6th in the First Division.

There are three groups of three teams, but not seeded or anything, so one group is all Northern Irish and another group is all Republic, so more than half the teams will not actually play a team from another country. The top team in each group qualifies along with the best 2nd placed team, which makes me wonder why they don't just have 4 groups.

Then there's the schedule... one group game in Feb, one two months later in April... and then the Northern Irish season shuts down, so the next group games are in August and September.

The competition therefore has no momentum, semi-random teams with no merit basis, does not include many cross-border games, and does not include even all the teams from the top flights of both countries, so its not really an All-Ireland Cup. Oh, and you get 130k just for turning up? I want some of whatever they were smoking when they thought this one up

Now you know where that saying comes from eh

funnily enough SI didn't do it properly... there was a play off between the winners of the fai cup and the winners of division one two years ago but that was scrapped after one season, SI never took it out. It's supposed to be top four in each top division with the first round of games in march/april with the second round in august september so both leagues are in season to stop anyone having an advantage. As for the prize money if you win it you're sorted for years in the game, you end up making about 300k! IRL you get about 50k in tv money off Setanta and then a piece of 400k in prize money thats divided out amongst all the teams depending on how well you do in the competition.

The opening post made me laugh but that's not how it works IRL.

Thanks for clearing that up. The board don't think the competition is important... but with all that prize money surely the board of a skint Irish team would? Perhaps competition expectations should be linked to rewards as well as reputation.

This is the flipping mentalest competition I've ever come across. First the team in 3rd in Ireland and Northern Ireland play a two legged qualifying round to see who gets in... even though the teams in 6th and the team that was relegated in 12th qualify automatically from Northern Ireland, and the 4th place team in Ireland qualify automatically ahead of the 3rd place team. This is played during Ireland preseason, so the NI team is fully fit and the Republic team is not. Then I, newly promoted to the Irish Premier Division, play a one-off qualifying round at THE NATIONAL STADIUM with the team that came 6th in the First Division.

There are three groups of three teams, but not seeded or anything, so one group is all Northern Irish and another group is all Republic, so more than half the teams will not actually play a team from another country. The top team in each group qualifies along with the best 2nd placed team, which makes me wonder why they don't just have 4 groups.

Then there's the schedule... one group game in Feb, one two months later in April... and then the Northern Irish season shuts down, so the next group games are in August and September.

The competition therefore has no momentum, semi-random teams with no merit basis, does not include many cross-border games, and does not include even all the teams from the top flights of both countries, so its not really an All-Ireland Cup. Oh, and you get 130k just for turning up? I want some of whatever they were smoking when they thought this one up

After reading that, my brain is in knots and I can't stop laughing.

i know, it's completely messed up the way it's done. that's probably the most logical explanation for it that you'll see! i played in the qualifier with Dundalk after winning promotion in Landsowne Road and despite the fact the Landsdowne is a building site for the past 18 months and will be for the next 18 months we still managed to get a crowd of 300 people into a building site for a game of football. the attendances are ridiculous in it too, you get more at a pre season friendly than at a setanta cup game in fm. thank god for the prize money though!