Kieran Shannon: Five years on from magic of Tipp and Cavan, how many have drifted from Championship carnival?

Half-a-decade on, what chances we’ll again see counties with a similar profile to Cavan’s and Tipp’s back in an All-Ireland semi-final or even quarter-final?

Conor Sweeney and Bill Maher, 5, of Tipperary celebrate following the 2020 Munster SFC Final win over Cork  Photo by Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

It’s five years ago now. When Cavan players made their way to Armagh for the Ulster final not by team bus but in their own individual cars and listened to the concluding stages of the Munster final on the radio. If Tipp could shock Cork, they thought, then they could shock Michael Murphy and Donegal.

They duly did. As Damian Lawlor would put it in his book After the Storm on those surreal Covid times, the odds of two earthquakes rocking the Gaelic football world on the same day had been minimal. But those Cavan players sensed that there was something in the air that winter in more ways than one. It was the year of the upset and the underdog, like a glorious throwback to the decade prior to the one before.