Former All-Ireland Senior Medal winner with Wexford Tom Dempsey says that the GAA need to help the likes of Carlow to have a sustained run to enable them to compete against teams at the top level.
Carlow’s Division One hopes are hanging by a thread as they play Westmeath in next Sunday’s Division One Relegation decider in Mullingar, and speaking to KCLR, Tom says that Carlow didn’t get a fair chance with the current round robin format when competing in last years Leinster Senior Championship.
He said “It’s very very important that they beat Westmeath, because to stay at the top level and I would be in favour of a six team Leinster Championship given that because even for Carlow last year, they spent six weeks in the Tier 1 All-Ireland Championship or Leinster Championship”.
“That’s not enough for them to kind of promote themselves, to get themselves used to the situation, to up their standards, and I think we need to be helping teams like Carlow, for me the Marty Kavanagh’s, the Jack Kavanagh’s, David English, the John Michael Nolan these guys, these guys are as good as anywhere around and they deserve to be playing in the Top Tier around but it’s looking a bit grim”.