Final eight teams bring flaws and inscrutable mysteries - but no big scary beast

All-Ireland football quarter-final weekend. Four from the north, two from the south and one each from east and west please, Carol. The arteries to Croke Park will clog and groan from early morning, fat with hope. There have been reports of families camping out at the M1 toll bridge for days now. You’d get a Sunday ticket for the Upper Hogan quicker than a Saturday parking spot at the Applegreens in Lusk.

Down to the last eight, then. None of them travelling as forlorn hopes. Like political polling, we’d maybe want to be careful about drawing too many conclusions from the line-up – this is a snapshot in time, nothing more. But after months of bellyaching and ballyragging, it should be noted that this is a healthier-looking snapshot than has usually been the case at this stage.

Think about it. When was the last time we got down to the last eight without a turkey-shoot in the offing? It’s a decade at least – and even in 2013, Mayo ended up laying waste to Donegal. Whether through the old-style qualifiers, the Super-8s or even the Covid-era provincial finals, it has generally been the case for a long time now that when we get to this stage, telling the contenders from the pretenders had not been a problem.

But who would you say are the impostors in 2023? Cork, who’ve beaten Mayo and Roscommon in the past fortnight? Monaghan, who’ve beaten Tyrone in Tyrone and drawn with Derry in Derry? Armagh, who holed Galway’s season below the waterline a fortnight ago and watched from the comfort of the shore as the LÉ PJ went down last Sunday?

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Nope, no chancers there. No makey-uppy runs to the last eight. No handy passage through the qualifiers or off-the-radar stealth raids through the back door. Everybody has had their chance to show the world they don’t belong at the sharp end of the season and yet all of them have found a way to stay upright. Iron has generally sharpened iron.

In fact, the softest records in the competition unquestionably belong to the two favourites. Dublin and Kerry are the only teams in the quarter-final line-up who haven’t beaten a Division One side to get here. Kerry have overcome Tipperary (relegated to Division Four), Clare (relegated to Division Three), as well as Cork and Louth (both failed to get out of Division Two). But they lost to Mayo in Killarney, where no Kerry team has lost since Fungie was a calf.

Similarly, the Dubs have faced Division Four opposition twice (Laois and Sligo) and Division Two opposition three times (Kildare x 2 and Louth), winning them all with varying levels of ease. But they could only draw against Roscommon. Unique among the runners and riders this weekend, every team they’ve beaten is gone from the championship already.

Given all that, what do we know for sure about Dublin, really? The presumption that Dessie Farrell’s side can automatically match strides at a higher speed than they’ve been running is precisely that, a presumption. Any evidence for it is circumstantial. By having to endure a league outside the top flight, Dublin arrive here completely untested against the top teams.

They haven’t beaten Division One opposition since last year’s Leinster final. They haven’t won a knock-out game against a Division One team since the 2020 final. Their record in close games under Dessie Farrell has been stubbornly unimpressive, whether in league or championship. They haven’t beaten a Division One team in a game decided by a goal or less since February 2020.

Does that mean they can’t do it this weekend against Mayo? Patently not. But it has to give their supporters pause. As does the fact that after 15 years of Dean Rock and Bernard Brogan, they don’t have a money-in-the-bank free-taker any more. Rock’s form has fallen off a cliff, Cormac Costello looks to be carrying a niggle, Stephen Cluxton has been press-ganged into taking the occasional 45 again, nine years after his last one.

Meanwhile, Mayo beat Dublin the last time they met. Last twice, if you want to count the league. Mayo have played Division One football all year. Mayo are the league champions and have beaten last year’s All-Ireland finalists on their respective home patches inside the past six weeks. They have a free-taking committee, designed for all purposes, positions and angles. Yet Dublin are the two-point favourites. We’ll see.

That’s the thing with all four fixtures this weekend. We’ll have to see what we see. There is no make-up of the Sunday evening draw for semi-finals that would come as a shock. Derry probably look the most solid of the favourites but you’re taking a bit on trust even there. Since Rory Gallagher’s departure, they’ve won an Ulster final on penalties, drawn at home to Monaghan and posted wins against an overmatched Clare and the worst Donegal team since the 2000s.

Is that better form than Cork running Kerry close and then beating Mayo and Roscommon in successive weeks? It would be a brave claim to make. Mind you, while Cork have a good record of reaching this stage in recent years, they have a truly appalling record of performing on it. Their last six games in the final eight: lost by 11 to Dublin, by 21 to Kerry, by three to Tipperary and came up pointless from all three games in the 2019 Super-8s.

Will this go-around be different? Maybe. The last time they won a quarter-final was 2012, which was also the last time they came in with a Munster title under their belt. They don’t have that this time but they carry genuine scalps in their knapsack. Derry are formidable, clearly. But this is a defining weekend for them.

As it is for so many. If Tyrone beat Kerry, Darragh Canavan will presumably trampoline to the tip of the top of the Footballer of the Year chat. But even though he’s been in and around the Tyrone panel for five seasons, this will be his first time starting a match in Croke Park.

His brother Ruairí's first championship start anywhere came (checks notes) a fortnight ago. The excitement and commotion around them is predicated less on what they’ve done and more on what they might yet do. But they have to go and do it.

Everyone does. Armagh and Monaghan arrive in Croke Park with even worse quarter-final records than Cork. These are just not games they win, either of them. But one of them will be going through, despite themselves or otherwise. And you can be guaranteed that both got a pep in their step when they saw the draw. Neither has anything to fear.

Which brings us back where we started. What’s true of Monaghan and Armagh is true of the other six as well. If there is a team to fear in the championship, they haven’t revealed themselves yet. There is no big beast. When we say, over and over, that this is the most open championship for years, what we really mean is that everyone is flawed.

Everyone has something that can be taken down and used in evidence against them. Kerry’s midfield. Dublin’s age profile. Derry’s learning-on-the-fly manager. Armagh’s gun-shy attack. Mayo’s sweeper. Cork’s seven years outside Division One. Monaghan’s predictability. Tyrone’s near-death experience against Westmeath.

Yet four of them will go through. And two of them will make the final. And four weeks from now, one of them will lift Sam Maguire. And everything else will be noise.

Eight teams left. Summer’s mysteries have never been more inscrutable.