Five things we know after the weekend’s football
The day three of the country’s top five teams were rolled out for the first time all summer.
The much-anticipated day another one of them – Donegal – came to the Athletic Grounds and ended up rolling over the hosts while the hosts rolled over a bit themselves.
Throw in another couple of games in Navan and Mullingar and it was the busiest football day of the summer, without a hurling game in sight.
And what it was like? Like too much June football these past few years, too flat.
And yet it had its upside too that has us anticipating the late football summer as much as any other.
Some things the weekend reaffirmed for us:
For all the deluge of calls and proposals about changing the championship structure and rightly so, we’ve seen next to nothing about changing the league.
And yet that competition as its currently constituted is a factor in how unsatisfying early summer football can be.
We’ve said it before: football worked better when it had a Division 1A and 1B league like it had from 2000 to 2007. A broader range of counties got to play the top five or six counties in the country. You had 16 teams in the competition. If you were outside the top 16, you were just one season away from playing them via promotion. It added novelty and depth to the league – counties like Fermanagh, Sligo, Laois, Limerick and Wexford were making league semi-finals – and contributed to the depth and competiveness of the provinces, qualifiers and championship itself.
Now? You’ve just eight teams in Division One, with the same four or five constants – Dublin, Kerry, Cork, Mayo, and for the most part, Donegal. The system isn’t merely reflecting their superiority but shaping and reinforcing it. All the games they play against each other during the spring is compounding their advantage over the rest. It’s increasing the gulf between them and the rest.
Teams currently operating in Division Two – the likes of Galway, Meath, Cavan, Laois – need to be exposed to playing more games against the likes of Cork and Kerry during the spring as they were guaranteed under the old 1A/1B format. Otherwise the rest of us are going to be exposed to more predictable and pedestrian provincial championships like we’ve had since 2012.
It’s too trite to say to everyone else just win your way up through the divisions through the years through the spring a la Monaghan. Bar Malachy O’Rourke’s side, who has bucked and championed the system?
You take Tipperary. A couple of dubious home calls up in Armagh essentially put paid to their chances of escaping Division Three. Even should they win promotion from Division Three next year it still doesn’t expose them to league football against the likes of Mayo and Donegal in 2017, needed to properly compete in the summer with Kerry. The pathway is painstakingly incremental in a way it need not be if the old Division 1A and 1B format was restored.
There’s been an outbreak of this craic in 2015. You know the kind: a man holds his opponent and won’t let go, such as the various incidents Lee Keegan got entangled with Michael Lundy and Damien Comer in Salthill last Sunday.
It’s become particularly common in Mayo games and little wonder: it obviously didn’t escape them that it was a tactic Kerry used in Limerick to kill that game and when the two teams met in Killarney in their first league game of the year, Mayo were determined to give as good as they got on that score. But while Salthill last Sunday might be seen by Mayo supporters as an encouraging sign that they won’t cower to anyone and have finally learning some dark arts to kill and win games, it’s an ugly sight.
Players don’t want to be seen to back down so they’ll hold on but in the autumn this needs to be upgraded to a black card. They’ll let go off this carry on then.
The measure of a province’s strength and depth is the identity and quality of its third and fourth team. Last weekend did not reflect well on or auger well for Munster. You look at how hard Tipperary especially are finding it hard to compete consistently with the Old Firm and it makes you appreciate all the more what Limerick did under Liam Kearns 2003-2005 and then with Mickey Ned circa 2008-2010. Shame they hadn’t a Munster title to show for it.
Last Sunday night Ciaran Whelan rightly pointed out that there were too many games down for decision last Sunday and questioned why they weren’t staggered more through the weeks. It was a fair point but you could make a case that they could have also been staggered more over the weekend.
People were up in arms over a Laois-Carlow qualifier being played on a Friday night a couple of years ago and it was viewed as the end of that particular experiment. But the problem with Laois-Carlow was that the players involved – and their employers – had only a couple of weeks notice.
The odd provincial match between two neighbouring counties for a game fixed way back in October could certainly be played – and televised – on a Friday evening.
In outlining his case for revamping the championship while retaining the provincial championships, Jim McGuinness referenced the appeal of ‘the day out’.
Well, the thought struck us seeing their recent wins over Tyrone and Armagh in front of packed houses: has any group of footballers given more great days out to its supporters over a four or five-year spell as his former charges have?
They’re just one game away from a fifth consecutive Ulster final. They could be winning their third Ulster title from the preliminary round. Take even the year they didn’t win Ulster: 2013, and the days out they had that season: the sweet win over a Tyrone team that was just coming off a league final appearance, even the qualifier against Laois in Carrick-on-Shannon.
Last Sunday was their 22nd championship win in a little over four years. What a long way they’ve come. What a journey they’re given their people.
