Declan Bogue: 22 reasons to look forward to Allianz Football League 2022

We are unencumbered by local or national lockdowns, free to swamp pints pre and post-match and feel that lovely leagueness all over.

Fri, 28 Jan, 2022 - 16:30

Declan Bogue

Well, it’s back.

A full-fat and salty National Football League when we can criss-cross and circumnavigate the highways and byways of Ireland with none of your localised guff.

We are unencumbered by local or national lockdowns, free to swamp pints pre and post-match and feel that lovely leagueness all over, baby.

Here’s what we will look forward to...

1. What pandemic? All around the stands and the concourses, people have shed their masks throughout the pre-season competitions, like a veteran campaigner getting rid of a few winter pounds ahead of the league. If you truly believe this thing is over, then good for you. But many will not share your confidence. For those feeling more anxious than others, let’s get all the areas of the ground open and the ability to move into less densely populated areas.

2. The league is the league. But this might just be the least league-iest league that ever leagued. For one, there are a number of big teams that need to get winning; we are looking at you Armagh and your record against the big dogs of Ulster football in particular. Dublin could be doing with the ‘let’s blow these culchies away’ attitude of yore if only to lift the sugar slump brought on by their first Championship defeat since 2014 last August.

Dublin manager Dessie Farrell. Picture: INPHO/Ken Sutton

With a few departures over winter, there will be a few lads trying to make their way onto the Tyrone team surprised at how damn hard the others are trying to lay down markers.

3. For a group of teams, it kind of feels if not the last throw of the dice, certainly one of them. You have Michael Murphy and Donegal and his worth bring shown once more as he single-handedly reeled in Monaghan’s lead in the Dr McKenna Cup when introduced. Then there’s Conor McManus, Darren Hughes, Karl O’Connell and Colin Walshe and all sorts of Oriel veterans who are just going to throw themselves over the top one last time – though Banty would insist you’ll see the same boys back in twelve months’ time regardless.

4. Sure lookit. It’s one thing gearing up for a last big push if there is a provincial title or an All-Ireland somewhere on the horizon, however blurry it might appear. You can but only admire Ross Munnelly at 39 showing up for another league campaign after first playing in 2003, his now manager Billy Sheehan joining the Laois panel a year later. Then you have Niall McNamee. He made his Offaly debut in the 2003 Championship at a mere 17 and here he is, still bossing it. And Neil McGee and Mick McCann were first spotted on county teams back in 2005. That’s some commitment.

STILL GOING STRONG: Niall McNamee of Offaly

5. It’s a hearty farewell to others. Mayo’s Colm Boyle will never again line a man up for a shoulder 40 yards away. Cian O’Sullivan, Philly McMahon and Kevin McManamon leave with buckets of medals with the Dubs. Tommy Walsh, Cathal Cregg, Paddy Cunningham, Paddy McGrath, Gary O’Donnell and Paul Broderick will all head into a well-deserved retirement.

6. Let’s head on down through the tables. Division 2 has a distinctly aristocratic feel with Down, Derry, Galway, Meath, Cork and Offaly. There’s more than one team you would be saying need promotion with a sense of desperation to justify the work going in. There are no riddles in Division 2. They are all going eyeballs out for it so it frequently makes for a better watch than Division 1 games. Division 3 is a right old stew, with no outstanding teams wondering how they have gotten themselves in this position. Old Money only goes so far in elbow pads and Land Rovers, but to see Cavan’s name in the Division 4 rankings is quite remarkable given their recent Ulster Championship heroics.

7. After the league-based Championship was narrowly defeated in last October’s Special Congress, there was a broad acceptance that when it comes to Gaelic football, the league is the best inter-county competition. Colm O’Rourke hangs this argument out on the line for an annual airing, but adds the rider that it is on at the wrong time of the year. It’s this part I struggle with, like the guest at Fawlty Towers asking for a room with a view, to be met with Basil Fawlty’s robust reply; “Well may I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain …”

8. The point we are stringing out here is, have you looked out the window lately? Where’s the January snow? Where’s the rain even? Only this week, we went for a walk wearing shorts. I’m no Meteorologist, but the weather for the last few years has been entirely fine for league.

9. Yeah, of course there are exceptions. Watching the uprights sway in Ballybofey is a spectator sport in itself. The Tyrone defeat of Dublin in a waterlogged Healy Park before Covid shut everything down was a throwback. As was the surface in Edendork a few weeks before. But it’s been a few years since we can recall grounds staff pushing snow back from the sidelines or the yellow ball being used.

10. And then you have conditions in general. Forgive the name-drop, but I had a good chat with Dara Ó Cinnéide during the week and the start of the league came up in conversation. There was a good run of seasons when he would show up for Kerry business flying out of his skin after putting down a whole load of work with his Sigerson team. The only thing was that none of it mattered when the pitches were one-part boggy moss and two parts tacky muck. Trying a sharp turn could relieve a man of a Puma King. You simply couldn’t get away from a marker on soft ground. Those who had been easier on themselves over the winter found they could get away with it, and so they did.

11. Back then, most counties kept a set of long-sleeve jerseys for the league. Around 20 years ago, jerseys were like parachutes with reams and reams of unnecessary material. It came as no surprise to read in Paul Galvin’s self-penned autobiography that he used to take the number 10 Kerry jersey along with his Finuge one to a local seamstress to have them taken in. The next county to bring back the long sleeve league jersey should get extra points for Hipster Value.

12 There are a great few lines in Sean Cavanagh’s autobiography about the changes in his time playing league. “In 2003, the idea was to get the baggiest shorts in the kit-bag because nobody wanted to be showing off a big fat arse or drawing attention to his other bits. You’d shout to (Tyrone’s kitman) Moynagh, ‘Throw us a thirty-six there Mickey.’ “Now they’re down to size 28 because the lads want to look sexy. The shorts are like compression pants.”

13 Another Cavanagh yarn. Why not. “The day I knew I was truly past it came in late winter 2016 when one of the boys came in brown as teak. I tried to get the banter going; ‘Jeez lad, there’s a nice gloss off ya.’ “And he looked me straight in the eye, not missing a beat – ‘Ah yeah, I got the tan done today.’ “I sat down feeling like I was one hundred years old. Seriously. Sean Teague used to beat lumps out of me when I first started marking him in training in 2002 – and the only reason he beat me up was because I was young and fast. Imagine if I’d swanned in all tanned. He’d have killed me stone dead!”

14. If the players now live with fastidious habits, thankfully that needn’t spread to the spectators. There is a trick being missed here though. Ireland has become a nation of food obsessives. (Quick aside here to recall the ‘writer that doesn’t write’, Fran Lebowitz and her glorious addiction to leaving one-star reviews on Amazon. For ‘Ultimate Foodie Cookbook’, she wrote; ‘I despise the term ‘foodie.’ I mean, how is that a personality? ‘I like food’ – how original. Do you also like air? Water? Shelter?’) Anyway, while our tastes are becoming more refined and ever more fussy, the concession stands at grounds around the country have not kept pace. The occasional horse box serving coffee will be parked close to the ground, but surely there is an opportunity for local delicacies to flourish on match day. Seafood at Salthill, for example, or black pudding in baps with a jar of Beamish outside De Pairc. Coddle in Croke Park? Has to be better than what is on offer currently.

15. Sticking doggedly to the theme, like a corner-back at the turn of the century to a Sigerson-honed fancy forward, the foodstuff most compared to League football is Chinese food; tasty and nourishing when it’s there in front of you, but instantly forgotten. The perception of the league may just be one of the most curious competitions in sport. While it is on, nothing else matters. Cast your mind back to 2013 and Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s first year in charge as Kerry manager. They lost their opening match by six points to Mayo. 5,400 souls huddled into Fitzgerald Stadium to see the Dubs arrive next and Kerry failed to score in the entire second half as they lost 0-4 to 1-11. Kildare beat them by four, Donegal walloped them by nine. Battery acid was dripping down the phonelines on the Terrace Talk phone-in. By September 1st, Kerry had played their part in one of the commonly-accepted best games ever as Dublin edged past them in an epic All-Ireland semi-final. “It just had a feel all summer to me like a year you could win an All-Ireland,” was Fitzmaurice’s summation afterwards.

16. Of course, it’s not beyond possibility that a team who treats the league with the utmost sincerity can still win the All-Ireland. Cork won both in 2010 and under Jim Gavin, Dublin went after everything. But then you have the example of Tyrone. Even allowing for a year of outliers, shipping six goals to Kerry in a league meeting in Killarney had many asking if such a thing would ever have occurred under Mickey Harte. And we all know what happened next.

17. Mickey Harte. Louth. Man, that still gets some getting used to. Just last month he talked about the project to end all projects and how he and Gavin Devlin had presided over efforts such as decorating their Darvar Centre of Excellence with images of respected former county players. They have been in a number of meetings to guide the underage structures and see what can be lifted from the Tyrone methods. Locals were amazed to see them at so many local matches last summer. You must give them credit for taking such a detailed look under the hood.

18. This week, London made a wonderful gesture by making admission to all National League games free at their facility of McGovern Park. As ever, there will be an enormous turnover of players as the pandemic changed everything in London outside of Downing Street, but this Saturday night’s game against Carlow will be their first since February 29, 2020.

19. Colm Collins. What a man. He took over Clare at the same time as Jim Gavin came in with Dublin and Malachy O’Rourke fell in with Monaghan. And he’s still there, working his ass off, pushing them higher than ever.

20. Look, it’s only the league. You’ll be judged on Championship. Everyone knows that. This is only wintertalk, or it’s more modern incarnation, ‘sh*t music.’ Nothing will be read into the results. Those that think they are laying markers down? Heaven help their innocence. Just like Ger Loughnane maintains the best long-term result for a young player is to be a losing All-Ireland minor finalist, the best outcome for Division One is to finish third.

21. All the same though…

22. God, it’s good to be back.