Roscommon to join ‘big three’ in semis

APART from the failure of Dublin to make it back and the absence of Meath for the second successive year, it would be generally accepted that the eight teams who contest the weekend’s football quarter-finals in Croke Park qualified on the basis of their consistency.

The group features the All-Ireland champions of the past three years, along with Donegal who were successful for the only time 11 years ago, Roscommon who were last winners in 1944 and three who have never captured the title, Tyrone, Laois and Fermanagh alone in never having even won out of their own province.

More significantly perhaps, six of them all competed in Division 1a, while the other two Laois and Fermanagh won promotion. And, while few could have anticipated that the latter two counties would be in the shake-up, it's not as if they came from nowhere.