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

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).

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.

The Dubs have contested 21 to Kerry’s 20, although the Munster men are alone in having featured every year that quarters have been staged.

Dublin, who were knocked out in the qualifiers by Armagh in 2003, have played more games by virtue of appearing in three replays: Kerry in 2001, Donegal in 2002 and Tyrone in 2005.

The drawn match with Kerry in Thurles in ’01 was the first ever All-Ireland football quarter-final and to this day it remains one of the most famous, thanks mainly to Maurice Fitzgerald’s incredible late equaliser from the sideline.

Indeed, Dublin’s quarter-final record throughout the 2000s was patchy at best (P11 W3 D3 L5), culminating in an infamous 17-point defeat to Kerry in 2009.

That drubbing has gone down in history as a major turning point for the boys in blue and their record in quarter-finals has been absolutely impeccable since.

They have won 10 straight last eight knockout ties, beating Tyrone (twice), Cork (twice), Monaghan (twice), Laois, Fermanagh, Donegal and Mayo by an average winning margin of 8.1 points.

They will have the opportunity to extend that run to 11 when they take on Connacht champions Galway on Saturday.

Of course, Dublin’s success during this period has reached far beyond the quarters. Six of those 10 victories were secured en route to All-Irelands, and they also lifted the Sam Maguire in three of the four years in which the quarters were not played.

As imposing as Dublin’s quarter-final record is, it falls short of Kerry’s in terms of win percentage. The Kingdom have won 17 out of their 20 quarter-final matches (85%) compared to Dublin’s 13 out of 21 (62%).

On the subject of win percentages, two counties can actually better Kerry in this department. And neither of them have won an All-Ireland in the past 100 years.

Both Wexford and Tipperary have a perfect 100% record in All-Ireland football quarter-finals - the fact that both have only made one such appearance might explain such.

Wexford beat Ulster champions Armagh in 2008 with the great Mattie Forde to the fore, while Tipp shocked Galway in 2016 to qualify for their first All-Ireland semi-final since 1935.

After drawing with the Dubs in 2001, Kerry won their next nine quarter-finals on the bounce, eventually coming unstuck against Down in 2010.

This and Donegal in 2012 are their only two defeats. Their average margin of victory across their 17 wins is 8.7 points.

On Sunday they will play Derry in a repeat of last year’s pulsating All-Ireland semi-final, which Kerry won by two points.

Derry are nestled just behind Kerry in the win percentage table with an 80% success rate in quarters, albeit having played just five times at this stage of the competition.

They were victorious against Tyrone in 2001 and Westmeath in 2004, and then had to wait 18 years for their next quarter-final win in 2022 (versus Clare).

They defeated Cork in the quarters in 2023 so this weekend they are aiming for their third quarter-final victory over Munster opposition in three years.

Remarkably, Cork’s record in the quarters is almost identical to Dublin’s, at least in terms of their win percentage.

Granted, almost all of the Rebels’ success in this round came between 2002 and 2010, and since 2001 they have managed one All-Ireland to Dublin’s nine, but their quarter-final win rate also stands at 62%.

However, they have lost their last four in row (against Dublin, Mayo, Dublin again, and Derry), and last Sunday’s disappointing defeat to Louth means they will not be ending that sequence in 2024.

Like Cork, Mayo also experienced last eight heartache in 2022 and 2023, which constituted a disappointing drop-off coming on the back of an eight-game undefeated quarter-final run that stretched back to 2011.

They have made the third most appearances at the quarter-final stage (16) but they failed to make the cut this time around after losing to Derry in a shootout on Saturday.

Two strong footballing counties hoping to improve upon their rather uninspiring quarter-final records when they take to the field this weekend are Armagh and Galway.

After drawing one and winning three of their first five quarters between 2002 and 2005, Armagh have gone on a barren run of six consecutive defeats.

The Orchard County bowed out in the last eight in the last two seasons against Monaghan and Galway. The margins were fine. They lost both matches on penalties.

They will be fancied to finally end their quarter-final hoodoo against Roscommon on Saturday, although the Rossies have momentum on their side following their impressive win against Tyrone in the preliminaries. Davy Burke’s men are looking for their county’s first ever quarter-final triumph in what will be their sixth try.

As for Galway, they have successfully navigated just 20% of their quarter-final matches (two wins out of 10).

They might feel as though the draw has sometimes been unkind to them as four of their seven defeats came at the hands of Kerry.

Drawing reigning champions Dublin in the 2024 quarters could hardly be considered a stroke of good fortune either.

Donegal have won 33% of their quarter-finals to date (four out of 12) with their last victory coming in 2014 against Armagh.

All-Ireland SFC quarter-final win rate

As Ulster champions they will be expected to advance to this year’s semi-finals, particularly after drawing Louth, who will be making their first ever appearance in the quarters.

Of the teams that have played more than five quarter-final matches, Kildare and Monaghan have the joint lowest winning percentage (17%).

Monaghan’s shootout victory over Armagh in 2023 was their first win in the quarters in six attempts.

Kildare also hold the unwanted record of suffering the heaviest ever quarter-final defeat. In 2015 they were hammered by Kerry on a scoreline of 7-16 to 0-10 (27 points).

The only other team to beat an opponent by more than 20 points in a quarter-final is Mayo who trounced Roscommon by 4-19 to 0-9 in a replay in 2017.

Along with Roscommon, six other counties have featured in the quarters without winning a game, namely Laois, Sligo, Westmeath, Clare, Cavan and Limerick.

The other 10 counties in the football championship (Antrim, Leitrim, London, New York, Waterford, Carlow, Longford, Offaly, Wicklow and Louth) are yet to participate in an All-Ireland football quarter-final, although Louth will break away from that cohort on Sunday.

The idea of taking quarter-finals out of Croke Park and playing them at other provincial grounds has been floated in recent years.

When they were first introduced in 2001, Croke Park was being redeveloped and three of the four quarters were held outside of Dublin: Kerry v Dublin (Semple Stadium, Thurles), Derry v Tyrone (St Tiernach’s Park, Clones) and Galway v Roscommon (MacHale Park, Castlebar).

The drawn all-Leinster clash of Westmeath v Meath and the subsequent replay were the only quarter-final ties played at GAA HQ that year.

The following year all four quarters were in Croke Park and it has been that way since, apart from two replays that took place in Navan (Armagh v Sligo, 2002) and Castlebar (Galway v Donegal, 2003).

In total, 77 of the 83 quarter-final matches so far have been played at the famous Jones’ Road venue and all roads lead to Dublin again this Saturday and Sunday for the 2024 instalments.

There is only one guarantee: Wexford and Tipp’s status as quarter-final kings is safe, although their 100% record could be matched by Ger Brennan's men on Sunday.