Tyrone coach Joe McMahon: Let the top teams face off more often

McMahon wouldn’t do away with the provincial championship, which his captain Pádraig Hampsey believes should continue to be played on a straight knockout basis along with the All-Ireland.

However, he is enamoured by the prospect of the All-Ireland SFC being played using the Allianz Leagues format.

“From Ulster’s point of view and it’s well documented, it’s a very competitive championship,” the two-time All-Ireland winning footballer told the Irish Examiner. “We would be very happy to continue with that competitive championship because you saw the journey we went on this year, the games we played and they went a long way to supporting us.

“We can only speak for ourselves. Other teams out there might feel it’s not the perfect preparation for performance and results would suggest that. But I definitely think there is some scope for restructuring and getting the top teams playing each other on more of a regular basis.

“How they do that, flipping the league into the Championship is a possibility.

“Knock-out football is nice but when players are putting so much in and at the end being beaten it’s difficult to accept and it shortens your career in terms of the amount of playing time you get.

Pitting the top teams against each other as much as possible should be looked at.

"I don’t think the Super 8 worked as well as maybe they thought it would but at least the GAA are looking at trying to get it right and the way to do that is to be patient.”

McMahon couldn’t say enough about the likes of All-Star contenders Niall Sludden and Darren McCurry who chose to fight it out for starting places rather than go back to their clubs in the early part of the summer.

“There were lads early on getting their chances and others who weren’t and full credit to the lads who stuck in and proved their worth and quality. We picked lads based on what we saw through the naked eye in training. Because of the short window that we had, there was no going back on reputations or what players had done in the past. It really was on current form.

“The likes of Niall and Darren totally turned things around and that says more about them than any of us. Another example would be Paul Donaghy. He started out well, was showing well in training after coming off the back of a good championship with the club and started against Donegal and kicked 10 points.

“But as the season progressed he went out of form a bit and other players came in. Then all of a sudden he’s in contention to start again in the All-Ireland final and he comes on and makes an impact in the last five minutes.

“I think the big thing was during the height of the Covid times there were lads on the periphery who drove on the rest and kept the flame burning and that will stand to them going into their club football.”