With the Super League season about to start, there’s lots of buzz in Irish basketball. Things are also settled, everyone knows exactly how the format will go. Naturally, Emmet Ryan can’t let things lie. Here’s his wild plan to change the Irish postseason for the better. Welcome to the McIntyre Final Eight system.
Everyone knows how everything is going to work. The Super League season will involve everyone playing each other twice. Then, the champions of Irish basketball will be decided by a conventional knockout system. That’s fine, it’s clean. It also doesn’t reward the best teams in the regular season all that much. We can do better.
The current situation
The men’s Super League in Irish basketball has switched to a single league format. In recent seasons, largely due to the pandemic, the league operated on a two conference system. That resulted in unbalanced schedules and a playoff format made sense.
The league is switching back to a single ladder now. There are 13 teams and everyone plays everyone else twice, once at home and once away. At the end of that, the top 8 teams will play a single elimination tournament. Home and away venues will be decided based on regular season ranking. Then there’s a neutral venue one-off championship game.
The women’s Super League didn’t have such a conference split. It has 10 teams and they play each other once at home and once away. With the women, the regular season is somewhat enshrined as the must-win. The postseason, where only two teams miss out on qualification, is understandably less valued.
That’s two different ways to define a champion of Irish basketball. Lots of teams keep going deep into the campaign but value is lost. The McIntyre Final Eight system enables the best of both worlds.
What on Earth are you talking about?
The McIntyre Final Eight, named for its creator Kenneth McIntyre, is a system used in Australia. The NFL in rugby league and the AFL for Aussie Rules use different variants of it. Essentially, its aim is to maximise the reward for league finish while still enabling a large number of playoff participants. There are two formats. One that would be popular, one which probably wouldn’t due to the moving parts.
We’ll start with the more complicated format. That’s the NRL system, which uses the original McIntyre Final Eight. The four seeded match-ups would be 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6, and 4 vs 5. The order they would be played in however would be reversed and vital, as the two lowest seeds to lose are eliminated. So, assuming it goes to form, that’s teams 7 and 8. The two highest ranked losers would advance to play the two highest ranked winners in the next week.
The next week it would be home advantage to the higher seeds in those two match-ups. Then the two winners would advance to face the two highest ranked winners from the first week. At that point it’s a standard semi final and final format.
You’re bored, confused, or both. Don’t worry, I was getting this out of the way to get the cool one for Irish basketball.
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The AFL model
Now we’re sucking diesel. Aussie Rules uses a format of the McIntyre Final Eight that I love and ticks the big boxes. Here’s what the opening weekend of the Super League playoffs would look like:
Main quarter finals
1 vs 4
2 vs 3
Qualifying quarter finals
5 vs 8
6 vs 7
The two winners of the Main quarter finals advance directly to the semi finals. The two losers then get a second bite of the cherry, with home games on the second weekend against the winners of the Qualifying quarter finals. We’ll assume it goes to seeding, with teams 1, 2, 5, and 6 winning.. This is what
Qualifying semi-finals
4 vs 5
3 vs 6
After that, it reverts to the almost same model as it currently exists. The only variant is that if, say, the team that was the 4 seed won in the Main quarter finals round it would earn a home Main semi-final irrespective of who it was against.
The price, essentially, is playing one extra week of basketball. The benefit could be enormous for Irish basketball and more than worth it.
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Why do either?
I’ll start with the complicated one, that’s the NRL version of the McIntyre Final Eight. I didn’t elaborate much earlier because it’s likely too complicated to get through any oversight from clubs or Basketball Ireland. The obvious downside is that there’s a risk of repeat fixtures on the second weekend. That risk is somewhat counterbalanced by the sense of the unknown for potential pairings beyond that.
The AFL model however addresses all of the challenges for both the men’s and women’s Super League competitions. Every place on the ladder has its own benefits. The top four are guaranteed either a semi-final spot or two shots at the semi-finals. The 5th and 6th place teams get home playoff games. There’s no real change for 7th and 8th. It means the races for 4th/5th, 6th/7th, and 8th/9th all hold value deep into the regular season.
It brings value to the potentially muddy dark days of the post Christmas phase of the men’s competition. At the same time, the women’s postseason gets a format that brings it value. In any sport, the more games that matter the better. That way more people will care about what’s at stake and engage more. This goes for those playing, to those watching, and, of course, those of us covering the sport. It’s an energy boost for Irish basketball that the post cup spell would benefit from.
