So, we enter the sorting phase of the football championship. The great virtue of the new system, and the Super 8 round-robin before it, is that all teams go to the starting line together and the obstacle course is the same for everyone.
Yes, there will be varying quality in the different groups but the imperative is the same: top your group and avoid the preliminary quarter-finals and if you can’t manage that, come second and get home advantage in the additional match.
That is the centrepiece of the GAA’s championship structure, much criticised for its lack of jeopardy and the unimpeded progress of three-quarters of the starting field. Everyone has something to fight for: the avoidance of elimination, a home draw in the next round or direct access to the last eight. Dead rubbers will be minimised.
Last year was the first iteration of the current format, and to be fair it delivered more competition than had been anticipated
Already there are rumours that the administrative pendulum is swinging back towards a little more jeopardy. Suggestions are already in the ether to tweak the system by reducing the All-Ireland stages to four groups of three with provincial champions automatically proceeding to the quarter-finals — there to be joined by the four group winners.
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Last year was the first iteration of the current format, and to be fair it delivered more competition than had been anticipated. Nobody ended the group stages on maximum points and only two counties lost all three matches.
The final day turned into snakes and ladders on grass. Two teams leading their respective tables, Mayo and Galway, lost top spot in the last round of matches and the third-placed team moved up in all four groups.
As a final irony, after all the hullabaloo about who had seized home advantage, three of the four matches were won by the away side — Mayo against Galway, Tyrone in Donegal and Monaghan in Kildare’s temporary home of Tullamore. But three of the fixtures were also thrillers, won by a point.
For all the lack of jeopardy, the excitement levels were exemplary.
If there was a hard landing it arrived in the All-Ireland quarter-finals where the three provincial champions — Dublin, Kerry and Derry — a fortnight’s rest under their belts, won easily.
The one non-provincial champion to win their group, Armagh, ended up getting touched off by Monaghan in what was becoming a familiar style, after a penalty shoot-out
Dublin and Kerry savaged Mayo and Tyrone and although there was just a four-point margin in the Derry-Cork match, the prospect of the Ulster champions losing had never materialised during the match. The one non-provincial champion to win their group, Armagh, ended up getting touched off by Monaghan in what was becoming a familiar style, after a penalty shoot-out.
Michael Murphy’s point in his column last week that you don’t see All-Ireland winning form until the quarter-finals was true last year, as both of the eventual finalists, Dublin and Kerry, had dropped points in their first group matches before progressing to the last eight and uncovering the field guns.
Murphy’s corresponding view was that whereas you mightn’t be able to identify winners before the knock-out stages, you could pick out those teams who weren’t going to win.
Last weekend was a case in point. The two provincial champions, Kerry and Galway, got up and running. It may be too early to pronounce on their precise prospects but there was nothing wrong with their opening group matches — a fence at which the Munster champions actually fell last year.
Coincidentally the opponents in both cases were All-Ireland semi-finalists 11 months ago. Monaghan’s freefall has been coming, with the moving on of a generation of players who had flown the blue-and-white flag with distinction over the past 10 years, multiple injuries, and despite the popular and well-regarded management of Vinny Corey.
Getting steamrollered in Killarney wasn’t a big turn-up and didn’t say a whole lot about the Munster champions beyond it being inadvisable to put up just two points against them before half-time.
Derry’s flatlining season received greater attention because the hopes vested in them had been correspondingly higher. Saturday’s defeat by Galway came with added misfortune when it was announced that Conor Doherty and Eoin McEvoy were not fit to play.
The team’s defence had been the springboard for half their goals during the league and in the final McEvoy scored a hat-trick. As manager Mickey Harte fatalistically said about the injuries, what can you do? Fatalism aside, the team for the second match were largely authors of their downfall.
With a full hand, the league winners will be better, but that sense of well-grounded ambition with a robust record painstakingly assembled against the best teams has been cracked and will be hard to reconstitute
Most obviously, Gareth McKinless’s reprehensible violence towards Damien Comer and its condign punishment left the team short their only remaining first-choice half back.
Goalkeeper Odhrán Lynch avoided the indignities of the Donegal defeat but did launch a kick-out straight at Matthew Tierney from which the first Galway goal flowed.
With a full hand, the league winners will be better, but that sense of well-grounded ambition with a robust record painstakingly assembled against the best teams has been cracked and will be hard to reconstitute.
Galway have been here before and lost out in the group last year after being beaten by Armagh. They must learn from that and press home the advantage earned on Saturday.
Manager Pádraic Joyce was mindful of how last season disintegrated after the final match of the round-robin. His brusque demeanour makes no attempt to hide his ambitions, whether last year saying that the league was something he wanted to win or his mission statement on taking over the job four years ago that success would be represented by winning an All-Ireland.
It is all of 14 years since a county, Cork, won the All-Ireland football title, having lost a match in the championship. In the condensed season, it’s even harder to process a defeat and successfully reset.
Can anyone see that changing at this stage?
