THE FOGARTY FORUM: Time to play it fair with Limerick

Compare and contrast — for the second year running, Mayo footballers have qualified for a Division 1 semi-final having won just three of their seven round games.

Over the last three seasons, Limerick hurlers have played 17 round games in Division 2 or 1B, winning 14 of them and losing just one.

Can football be compared with hurling in such circumstances? When it comes to fairness, the answer most definitely is yes and few could blame people in Limerick for thinking it’s in short supply as far as John Allen’s team is concerned.

Or Donal O’Grady’s, as it was, in 2011. Then, having topped the old Division 2 with a 100% record, they beat Clare in the final to qualify for Division 1.

Or so they thought.

What has transpired since has been wholly inequitable to Limerick. Although it was suggested their officials did not contribute to the league proposals that saw them demoted to Division 1B, it was not the players’ fault.

Yet they are the collateral damage, the ones who have been treated most harshly by a restructuring of a competition that has only damaged it further.

The Division 2 cup they won in 2011 was never going to take pride of place on any mantelpiece but it must go down as one of the most irrelevant trophies in GAA history.

Limerick aren’t world beaters. Not yet, anyway — they showed that on Saturday evening in Thurles. But they are more than just a cut above the likes of Offaly and Wexford.

The majority of those 14 round wins in the second tier over the last three seasons were in tame affairs where the superiority of their hurling was hardly challenged.

All they were guaranteed was one game they could lift themselves for against a bedfellow in a similar predicament. In 2011 and last year, it was Clare; this season Dublin.

There was never any room for sympathy. Two teams, one parachute. Over the last three seasons, the one time they didn’t blink they were later told it didn’t count.

Some will attempt to appease Limerick by pointing to next year and the silly prospect of league quarter-finals linking Division 1A and Division 1B.

Limerick can already count themselves in the 2014 knock-out stages but what good is it taking on the third or fourth best team in Division 1A when their preparation for it has hardly seen them break a virtual sweat?

It must be incredibly frustrating to Limerick players to know they are capable of winning a Munster title yet Central Council didn’t see fit to acknowledge them as one of the best eight teams in the land.

And let’s not dismiss that — there are eight teams who are of a high enough quality to compete regularly against one another. That either Clare or Cork will be joining them in Division 1B in 2014 is another regret.

Hurling Development Workgroup chairman Tommy Lanigan raises doubts about how an eight-team top flight could be facilitated. Too many games, he argues. Yet seven rounds of games with one weekend for a final between the top two would amount to eight weekends compared to the similar amount that will be taken up next season.

Unless Cork go down and their officials make an ungodly racket, it would appear Limerick’s fate is cast for another season at least. Even appreciating power of Cork’s sway, it’s highly unlikely Central Council won’t be for changing.

So Limerick will remain marooned, beating next to every team around them and going nowhere.

After Paul O’Connell made his province as much as his county proud on Sunday, yesterday morning the classrooms in Limerick would have been abuzz with talk of the Munster captain’s great deeds in London.

Would Declan Hannon or Paudie O’Brien’s gallant efforts in defeats the previous evening have been mentioned? Would anyone care?

Limerick lost the chance to join Division 1A on Saturday — nobody is disputing that result. Dublin’s resolve was stronger.

But Limerick were losers long before that and through no fault of their own.

Fourteen wins in 17 games — just how much more do they have to prove they wallow in a division where they don’t belong?

Sizing up to the challenges of the modern day

So you want to know how much Gaelic football has changed? Read on.

In 2006, the 15 Kerry players who started the All-Ireland final against Mayo were a combined weight of 1,212kg or, in older terms, 191 stone. That works out at 80.8kg or 12.72 stone a man.

In their Leinster U21 final victory last Wednesday, the average weight of a starting Kildare player was over 83kg, north of 13 stone.

The size of this team is incredible and it’s not as if they have reached their peak weights.

What’s more, they’re hardly robots. Sean Hurley, Thomas Moolick, Daniel Flynn and Paddy Brophy to name but four are footballers true and true.

However, apart from Kelly there is almost a uniformity in the physique of these 6ft-plus giants. Their totemic full-forward line looks identical in shape to the centre trio of Hurley, Moolick and Flynn.

The stature of these players is as impressive as it is intimidating but it’s players with lower centres of gravity like Niall Kelly who offer them a vital difference in tack.

Goals attract crowds and game is crying out for more scores

We all know the old saying of defence being an art form in itself, but, when it comes down to it, goals attract the crowds.

Worryingly, for the second Division 1 in succession, the total goals amount to 43, which works out at 1.5 goals per game In 2011, there were 57 goals in the 28 round games (over two goals a game) while a year previous there were 60.

Kerry on Sunday managed to record just their second goal in seven games, the worst record for finding the net in the group alongside Mayo.

Cork may have failed to reach the semi-finals but Sunday marked their fifth consecutive clean sheet, a return to their miserly days of last year when they went the whole season conceding just two and nothing in the championship.

There’s plenty to admire in that feat, but, in an age of swarm, blanket and wall defences the game is crying out for more scores. Maybe, just maybe, the black card can help.