Playing Practice!

When a team gets knocked out of the Irish cup, football fans console themselves with the old saying, 'that'll let us concentrate on the league'. This statement has in fact, no basis in' fact' and the opposite is what generally comes to the fore. If a stranger had gone to last week's match at the Showgrounds, between Linfield and Ballymena, he would have assumed , quite wrongly, that Linfield were the team that had, had a 2 week lay-off. United looked jaded from the start and got worse as the game went on and I'm of the belief that this is down to the fact of them having a 'rest' day on the previous Saturday. Of course they did have a friendly with Derry City on the Friday night, but that's poor compensation for a competitive match, in my opinion. Ask any football fan and if he's honest he'll tell you he'd much rather have his team play every Saturday and there's only one way I think to ensure that is the situation. With a new league set-up due to be unveiled next season, would the authorities consider only having two rounds of the Irish cup on Saturdays, the first round involving the senior clubs and the final. All the other Irish cup games could be played in midweek, yes there might be a clash with European games, but all true fans will go along to watch their favourites no matter what, despite what some commentators seem to fear. We could even have one match televised, either on a Wednesday or a Monday night and that would give everybody the chance to be an armchair fan if their team wasn't involved in the televised game. Maybe it would also have the spin-off of ensuring teams are up for it, every Saturday, which in my opinion is much better than the fare served up last Saturday at the Showgrounds!