GAA Director General Tom Ryan has said it will be “a challenge” to have a reworked football championship proposal ready for Congress 2022 next February.
In the wake of insufficient backing for Proposal B at Special Congress today, GAA president Larry McCarthy said reform of the football championship will be revisited “very, very quickly”, but he too cast doubt on a reworked Proposal B being voted on in four months time.
With Proposal B failing to receive 60% support, the earliest any change to the football championship can now take effect is 2023. That is the new target for Ryan and McCarthy, but given their concerns over having a fresh proposal cooked and surveyed by next February, another Special Congress this time next year appears inevitable.
The two highest officeholders in the GAA said Proposal B, despite today’s result, will not be tossed in the bin and will form the “starting point” for the next proposal to come on stream.
McCarthy said he expects a new committee to be established in the coming weeks whose sole remit will be reform of the football championship and applying the necessary tweaks to the failed Proposal B.
With eight of the nine Ulster counties speaking against Proposal B on the floor of Special Congress, as well as Galway and Mayo, the GAA president accepted that any reworked proposal will have to include a “central role” for the provincial championships.
He also stated that GAA hierarchy will talk to Ulster counties with regard to the concerns they raised at Special Congress.
“The eight or nine people who spoke against it were all essentially supporting their own provincial championship. So I think that would suggest it has to have a central role somehow. Don’t ask me what that role is.
“I guess one of the suggestions floated early [with regard to Proposal B] was that there should be some link between the provincial championships back into
