The Laois senior football championship will be reduced to 12 teams over a two-year period after a proposal about a restructure received considerable support from clubs at this evening’s county board meeting.
Club delegates voted 38-5 in favour of reducing the number of teams in the senior grade at this evening’s meeting in the Laois GAA Centre of Excellence.
That is significant support for the motion and comes after the executive had backed the recommendation and after strong engagement with the clubs in recent weeks.
Reducing the number of senior football teams from 16 has regularly been mentioned and there have been various proposals in recent years alone. Led by football committee chairman Tony Bambrick it got support from clubs across the spectrum on this occasion.
It means that there will be three teams relegated from the senior football championship in each of the next two seasons. The intermediate winners will continue to be promoted.
By 2028, the senior and intermediate grades will both be comprised of 12 teams and will be played under a new format of two groups of six.
For next season, both grades will be played under the same format as recent years, with the eight teams that fail to make the senior quarter-finals going into the Senior ‘B’.
The four Senior ‘B’ quarter-final losers will meet in relegation playoffs with the losers of those two games automatically relegated to intermediate for 2027.
The two initial relegation playoff winners will then meet in another relegation playoff where the loser of that game will also be relegated.
For the 2027 season, there will be 14 teams in a group format (two groups of four and two groups of three) in the senior championship which will end up having the three relegation playoffs with the six teams that don’t make the quarter-finals. The three losers of those games will be relegated.
Should all that play out as planned, it will allow the new format come into use in the 2028 club championships.
Elsewhere this evening, delegates also backed a motion from Laois GAA on the club football leagues whereby only one team will be promoted and relegated in all divisions next season.
A counter-motion came from the floor to continue with two teams up and down but was defeated 25-12.
A motion on a slight change to the senior hurling championship received unanimous backing in the guise of a 28-0 vote.
The criss-cross format that was used in 2025 will continue but this time only the bottom team in each group will go into a relegation playoff. The Senior ‘B’ and the relegation semi-finals will be discontinued.
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