Tyrone great Frank McGuigan is predicting a bleak future for the provincial championships after none of this year's provincial champions or runners-up made it past the All-Ireland quarter-final stage.

McGuigan, who famously scored 0-11 in the 1984 Ulster final and whose sons Brian and Tommy have won All-Ireland medals with Tyrone, has branded the provincial championships as "meaningless" after this summer's results.

"I was never a fan of the back door and I have said this before. When the guys who brought it in sat down to draw it up it was automatically flawed because only 28 teams were offered a second chance," he said yesterday.

"None of the provincial winners got that chance. Anyone knows that you get that momentum through the back door it can be awfully hard to stop and we have seen that this year. Louth hammered Kildare, Tyrone hammered Down and yet Kildare and Down are the ones in the All-Ireland semi-final this weekend."

The lack of a second chance for provincial champions has been defended by Croke Park on the basis that the All-Ireland series is a separate competition to the provincial campaigns, but McGuigan doesn't buy that.

"They are coming up with answers and I don't agree with it. Look at it this way, who next year will go to provincial championship matches? They don't mean nothing. They are absolutely meaningless.

"People are going to stop and say 'it is €50 to get in to a provincial championship match and then maybe more again for my wife and kids but they don't mean anything so why should I go?' This is where the GAA is going to find out that they are wrong, next year when people don't go to provincial championship matches, and I think that is going to happen." Tweet

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