Dublin aim to go 40 not out in Leinster as era of dominance may force rethink

The Dubs have a record of 57 wins, one draw and one loss in the province since 2005.

Dublin manager Dessie Farrell: “I think it's probably time to have a proper review of the competition and see who does this benefit." Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Fourty-four years ago, the Munster Council gave Kerry a bye into the Munster final. It followed five consecutive seasons of winning the province, the last of them punctuated by the infamous “Miltown Malbay Massacre” when they scored nine goals and beat Clare in their semi-final by 36 points.

Excluding the 1976 Munster final draw against Cork, Kerry’s average winning score in that period was over 15 points. Something drastic had to be done to at least try and avoid further landslides and so, as much as it lasted only one year, they awaited Cork in the final where they won by 10 points.

Giving the challengers a running start wasn’t the worst idea but that Kerry group were a generational phenom. The following season, after beating Clare by 23 points, they overcame Cork in the final by 11.

Tomorrow, Dublin face Meath, the only team to have beaten them in 20 runnings of the Leinster senior football championship. Twenty. Not 11 as was the case for Kerry who suffered one Munster SFC defeat between 1975 and ’86. Twenty.

Such dominance, such cruelty if you want to look at it that way (Dublin’s average winning margin in Leinster since 2011 is 14.2 points) would be enough to throw your hat at it. In an almost identical situation, that’s exactly what current GAA president Jarlath Burns suggested the Armagh County Board do when Crossmaglen Rangers were in their pomp.

Between 1996 and 2015, Crossmaglen lost one county championship game to Pearse Óg in 2009. Burns proposed Crossmaglen be deemed the county’s representative in the provincial senior championship and the rest of the clubs in the Armagh SFC play for the intermediate title. "A lot of clubs would have lost their ambition because of the success of Crossmaglen," he said in 2007.

Administrators don’t like their product being devalued even when it’s their own contributing to the depreciation. In his time as Leinster chairman, former GAA president and Dubliner John Horan tried to regain autonomy for the province to shape the championship as they saw fit.

In 2017, Congress passed a Leinster motion to allow provinces to organise championships to take into account the strengths of the counties and possibly include a losers round. However, the format has remained largely the same.

It was Horan who in his last 12 months as president said what most people have been thinking about the provinces. “One of the big challenges is to tackle the monster that is the traditional feature of the GAA that is the provincial championships. Ulster and Munster you’d find it very hard to move in terms of the Munster hurling championship and the Ulster football championship.” 

At least Horan brought his native Dublin out of Croke Park but in their eight quarter-final matches outside GAA HQ their average winning score is 17.6 points. Tomorrow is the first last-eight provincial game involving Dublin to be played in GAA HQ since 2016 and there was no request by Meath to play it either in Navan or a neutral venue.

Nobody, not even Dublin, like the hammerings. Manager Dessie Farrell has questioned the appeal. He said last year: “I think it's probably time to have a proper review of the competition and see who does this benefit, these big wins, the big discrepancies between teams? Is there a better mixture?” 

And neither do the Dublin players, it seems. “To be quite honest, I don’t even know how many Leinster championships I have won, which is obviously not a good thing,” Dean Rock remarked last week. “For me, and I am only speaking for me, the Leinster Championship is dead in the water.” 

For the record, Rock has 12. And for the record, they are aiming for their 40th consecutive Leinster championship victory on Sunday. Since 2005, they are 57 wins, one draw and one loss.

Expected as they are to win the Delaney Cup for the 14th time in a row next month, the idea of Dublin receiving a bye into the Leinster semi-finals is likely to be broached. A shuffling of the Titanic’s deckchairs in one way, it would be a concession of Dublin’s might but also the opportunity to give more counties to have picked up a win before facing them. Besides, a one-week turnaround for Meath isn’t entirely fair and in the current schedule there is a fortnight between the quarters and semis.

At last week’s championship launch, Leinster chairman Derek Kent rightly made the valid point that every player in the room wanted to win a provincial medal. Dublin’s representative Cian Murphy already has four but only played in two finals and never as a starter.

He told them the championships were “alive and kicking”. Football-wise, that could be disputed but he couldn’t exactly send 10 of the 11 counties’ out dispirited. Like King Théodon said to Aragorn as he attempted to rally the troops as Helm’s Deep was being sacked, “What would you have me do? Look at my men. Their courage hangs by a thread.” 

For Wicklow, the championship has been very much full of vitality this past week but for them and nine others it will be brief. Everyone knows how this story ends.