Kieran Shannon: Forget Dublin v Kerry, Cork v Meath is the standout blue blood game next weekend
STANDOUT GAME: Meath's Jordan Morris with Ian Maguire of Cork. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady
It’s a question no generation of GAA supporter, certainly one from Cork, would ever have asked itself before: if you had a choice between beating a certain county in the league or beating them in the championship later in the year, which would you take?
For well over a century, it wasn’t even an article of faith as an unquestioned assumption that any championship match trumped any league match in terms of significance.
Even – especially – winning the league outright was treated with a certain scepticism, rooted in the painful knowledge that any such triumph in the spring could be undone by an early-round loss in May. Just as relegation could be erased and forgotten by a win on the first day out in champo.
Last June in Portlaoise though as we watched tens of diehard Cork football supporters jubilantly mingle with the team’s players out on the pitch upon knocking Roscommon out of the championship for the second time in 24 months, the thought occurred to us: Cork may now be Croke Park-bound but they’re still in Division Two.
Roscommon may be out of the championship but next year they’ll be back in Division One. Not least because when the counties met in Páirc Uí Chaoimh that February, Roscommon won and won well. Was that league game actually the bigger game?
If Cork had a choice between winning that night or this particular afternoon, between a return to Division One or a trip back to Croke Park in the championship, which would they take?
The question, compounded by Cork’s subsequent loss to Dublin in the last-12, is informed by a sense that Cork aren’t where they want to be or ought to be in either competition.
It’s 14 years now since the county last contested an All-Ireland semi-final. In the 14 seasons prior to that they had reached that stage nine times, and in the 14 before that, a further seven times.
In other words, Cork have gone from reaching 16 All-Ireland semi-finals over a 25-year span (1987 to 2012) to none over the last 13 years.
In theory they have diced with making that breakthrough. From 2019 to 2023 they were along with Dublin and Mayo the only county to make the last eight of the All-Ireland each season.
In 2024 and 2025 they bowed out at the preliminary All-Ireland quarter-final stage but not before claiming some decent scalps like Donegal at home and Roscommon that afternoon in Portlaoise.
In truth though they weren’t really close to breaking into that top four, or even top six; in those five years (2019 to 2023) that they bowed out at the last-eight stage, at least two of the other sides to make their exit at the juncture did so in more impressive or less humiliating circumstances than Cork.
It has led to an inescapable conclusion: to finally break back into the last four in the championship, Cork are going to have to break back into the top eight in the league, a division they haven’t operated in since 2016.
That’s why next Sunday’s game against Meath is so big. Even bigger than when the sides met in the championship last May in Navan.
For the first time in their many years in Division Two Cork enter its middle round finding themselves more so in a promotion race than a relegation battle.
They may, as John Cleary have pointed out, only played the three lowest-ranked teams to date but they’ve beaten all three, a trick and feat that has often been beyond them in previous years.
Meath also enjoy a 3-0 record. Weigh it all up and while Derry and Tyrone may still also be in this promotion race, whoever wins in Páirc Uí Rinn next Sunday has to be odds-on to finish above at least one of the northern powers and win promotion.
Meath will be almost as eager as Cork to get out of the division. Just like Cork they’ve spent nine of the past 10 years in Division Two (their one respite from it, 2020, coincided with Cork’s brief involvement, and promotion from, Division Three).
While they’re back to making All-Ireland semi-finals, they’re not yet back to winning Leinsters and to be the top dogs in Leinster Brennan will tell them they need to be routinely playing the big boys of Division One.
Meath have won four of the five encounters between the counties since 2022, including that championship meeting in Navan last May.
But Cork won the last time they played each other in Cork, 12 months ago.
It’s been a quirk of the fixture that the last four matches between the sides the winning margin each time has been four points. But Sunday more than any of those other recent encounters is the real Four-Point game.
Both sides are building to something.
From as far back ago as 2019 the core of this Cork team were either winning U20 or minor All-Irelands or trading blows with Dublin and Tyrone in the Super 8s.
Ever since then they have been propelled by an often-challenged belief and disrupted dream of the county getting back to contesting and even winning senior All-Irelands before the end of the decade.
Meath are now positioned to be the top team in Leinster.
But to do what they want to do in the summer, they first of all have to make their breakthrough in the league.
Forget Dublin-Kerry, Cork-Meath is the standout blue blood game of next weekend.
Because some league games can be just as big as a championship one.
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