The knockouts: Analysing 20 years of All-Ireland football quarter-finals

As one might expect, the game’s kingpins and greatest rivals, Dublin and Kerry, are out in front when it comes to quarter-final matches played.

LAST EIGHT: The first football quarter-final was played between Dublin and Kerry in Thurles in 2001. Maurice Fitzgerald’s wonder point sent the teams back to Tipp for a replay. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

THE weekend's All-Ireland football quarter-finals will be the 20th staging of the revised championship format.

Introduced in 2001 as a connecting round between the new ‘back door’ qualifiers and the traditional semi-finals, quarters have been part of the landscape every season since, apart from the Super 8 round robin years (2018 and 2019) and the not so super Covid years (2020 and 2021).