The miserable attendance at Croke Park on Sunday showed that the last thing football needed was the reintroduction of league semi-finals

A MIXED few days for the GAA with a satisfactorily functional congress making some necessary changes to the rule book, smoothly completing a presidential changeover and playing to the strengths of departing president Christy Cooney, keeping in perfect sync with the official clár right up to calling Liam O’Neill to step forward for his inauguration at 1600 on the button.

Yet the images of the weekend concerned the ghost town appearance of Croke Park for Sunday’s league semi-finals, which featured three of the past four All-Ireland finalists. There is however a connection between the two events.

First it should be noted that there were very few outbreaks of congress rebellion or madcap decision making across the motions list – of the sort that generally lead to an embarrassed cough at the following year’s congress and the swift acceptance of a countermanding measure.

Maybe the more patient explanation of the thinking behind Central Council motions and the fact that, as suggested by director general Páraic Duffy, they reflect the broad concerns of the membership has helped gain acceptance for ideas previously viewed with suspicion. Perhaps the new electronic voting devices have also helped by prompting decisions to be taken on an informed individual basis rather than by quick reference to what other delegates are doing. But whatever the reason, the top table were fairly pleased with the outcomes.

It was certainly an improvement on last year when a couple of motions added to the intercounty fixture list at a time when the balance between it and club activity has become a matter of significant concern.

One of the motions, the scrapping of extra time in an inadvertently wide range of matches, had to be revisited on Saturday but it was significant that the provincial councils’ desire to retain replays for all rounds (up until last year, there was extra time in first round fixtures) was reflected in the proposal, which instead clipped other competitions, such as the under-21 and club championships.

For whatever reason, the GAA has a major problem dispensing with competitions, however compelling the logic. The Railway Cups were apparently put down two years ago but sprang back to life. When the medical committee looking at burn-out, proposed amalgamating the elite underage football grades in a new under-19 competition there was uproar at getting rid of the under-21 football championship.

Then last year a motion to extend the season, basically to facilitate the return of National League semi-finals was nodded through. Unlike the proposal on extra time, this wasn’t remedied at congress but within 24 hours the failings of the idea had become obvious.

The football league especially has changed over the last decade of competition. It now forms a far more important part of a team’s year both as preparation for the championship and a more accurate indicator of how a side is going to do.

Two high-profile intercounty managers, John Evans in Tipperary and Val Andrews in Cavan have stepped down – and a third, Séamus McEnaney is due to face the firing squad tonight – with the trigger in all cases being league performance, a hitherto largely disregarded matter – or at least one that would always be judged in a championship context rather than before May has even begun.

Yet for all the burgeoning importance of the spring competition the public is not convinced. Whereas the performance of teams and new players is avidly followed in divisional fixtures there is a sense that it’s over before the play-off stages with the peak of general public interest coming on the last day of the regulation fixtures when promotion and relegation are decided.

It’s been frequently pointed out that the leagues are unique in global sport in that they create more of a buzz when they’re beginning than when they reach a notional climax. Never mind semi-finals; football league finals haven’t been pulling in crowds since the season changed 11 years ago. This year for instance it will be remarkable if the best attendance of the season doesn’t remain the 45,836 that turned up for the Dublin-Kerry opening match (on a double bill with Kildare-Tyrone) and that will be the third time in six years that a floodlit Dublin match at the start of the league – allowing that the 2007 and ’09 fixtures against Tyrone were special occasions in their own right – has drawn the competition’s biggest crowd.

Even last year, the final attendance when Cork beat Dublin was little more than 1,000 larger than for the counties’ meeting in the second series of league matches the previous February (on a double bill with the Dublin-Tipperary hurling league fixture).

There’s no use in calling for promotional campaigns and advertising. Unlike in the past, people get plenty of opportunity between qualifiers and All-Ireland quarter-finals to see the top teams in action during the championship. The price of motor fuel is too high and the stakes too low for supporters to be interested in significant treks for these types of matches.

The point is that no one’s that pushed who actually wins the league. Managers like to get the stress test of a play-off match under their belt or in the lower divisions secure promotion or avoid relegation. They also love a match at Croke Park – after the fog forced the postponement of the first Mayo-Dublin fixture earlier in the year, Mayo manager James Horan even looked well up for the idea of surrendering home advantage and refixing for Jones’s Road.

But as for who wins? Kerry’s Jack O’Connor certainly didn’t sound broken by Sunday’s loss to Mayo.“Yerra overall, no calamity,” he said. “It’ll be forgotten about in a week’s time. Obviously we’re disappointed we didn’t close the game out there. But our main objective coming into the league was to find a few new players, and we used a fair few again today. So it’s been a great league for us, in that respect.”

Only once in the years under review has the crowd at football league semi-finals touched 30,000 and that was in 2003, the heyday of Tyrone and Armagh plus Mick O’Dwyer’s first year with Laois. The average final attendance over that period is 25,759.

Even for the big guns the whole point of playing the venue is to sample a big-occasion atmosphere. Before 11,342 – and that’s before Mayo and Kerry supporters disappeared – Sunday was more reminiscent of a training match. Ideally the league should have been trimmed back and not expanded. Play the seven matches and whoever’s top of the table give them the trophy – and a guaranteed four home matches the following season.