Leagues apart
After all the hand wringing about the proximity of league finals to championship, there was no great surprise that Jack O’Connor was well pleased to have reached another one.
Leaving aside the Kerry manager’s phenomenal record in league finals and following them up with All-Irelands – which he described three years ago as a “piseog” – his appetite for the occasion is based on purely practical grounds.
“Look, it’s a big bonus for us. Despite what people think, we have a good share of players ... we were counting this morning, we had five or six players starting today who weren’t on the team last year. Every game for those boys is a bonus.
“The lads love Croke Park, they love getting back there and we’ll have a game of football with Mayo. It’s not the be-all and end-all who wins it. It’s just an extra game, which is great, and it shortens the span. We were going to have a month to a Munster semi-final, so that shortens it by a week.”
This checklist of benefits contrasts with the lived experience in the provinces with functioning championships, Ulster and Connacht. Mayo, back in the final a few minutes after being in an actual relegation position, learned a hard lesson two years ago.
Having beaten Galway in the Division One final, they lost their first round in Connacht a week later to Roscommon. A similar fate befell last year’s winners Derry but in different circumstances. They had three weeks to get ready for Donegal, who themselves had won the Division Two title on the same day Derry won the top-flight version.
This effective overlap has only been happening for the past two seasons as the championship calendar contracted. In that time, four counties have played a championship match within a week of a league final. Only Wicklow two years ago survived, defeating Carlow a week after losing the Division Four final to Sligo.
This year there will be four teams in that position: both Division Four finalists Wexford (playing Laois) and Limerick (playing Cork), Division Two finalists Roscommon (travelling to London) and Mayo, who play Sligo.
Kevin McStay probably won’t need reminding that 15 years ago after being well beaten in the league final by Cork, Mayo a few weeks later lost their first Connacht championship match – to Sligo. — Seán Moran
Dublin’s goalkeeping conundrum
Dublin enter the championship having used three different goalkeepers over the course of their Division One league campaign.
Gavin Sheridan started three games (Mayo, Donegal, Tyrone), Evan Comerford started three (Kerry, Derry, Armagh) while Stephen Cluxton was between the posts for one, against Galway.
Cluxton didn’t feature during Dublin’s 2024 league – during which they used two goalkeepers, David O’Hanlon and Comerford – but the 2019 Footballer of the Year started their opening Leinster SFC game and retained the jersey thereafter for the rest of last summer.
Cluxton had been named to start against Tyrone last Sunday but did not line out.
“He just picked up a knock during the week,” said Dublin manager Dessie Farrell afterwards. “A very unfortunate thing and it just ruled him out of this weekend.”
The previous week, Cluxton had been parachuted in to replace Comerford, with Farrell saying the Ballymun man had suffered an injury. Comerford was not on the bench in Omagh on Sunday either, with Hugh O’Sullivan on standby as Dublin’s sub goalkeeper against Tyrone.
The tweaks to the new rules in relation to the movement of the goalkeeper will have helped Cluxton’s chances of playing in the championship but it remains to be seen if his selection between the posts will be a straightforward one.
Either way, it doesn’t look like Dublin will be looking to their goalkeeper to keep the scoreboard moving this summer – Comerford’s point against Derry was the only score registered by a Dubs number one throughout the league. — Gordon Manning
Cameras roll for Ring - and Ring rolls for the cameras
The upcoming Cork-Tipperary league final is weirdly the first such meeting in 65 years. That 1960 match was played in the Cork Athletic Grounds, the predecessor of Páirc Uí Chaoimh and was won by Tipperary, 2-15 to 3-8.
Of particular interest is that Christy Ring scored 3-4 of Cork’s total and unusually there is actual footage of the match.
It is contained in the film Christy Ring, made by the distinguished Cork director Louis Marcus for Gael Linn. Scripted by the late writer Breandán Ó hEithir, it focused on Ring’s views on hurling and his explanation of the skills involved in the game.
Writing in The Irish Times on the release of the film in 1964, Marcus wrote about the league final.
“Our film on hurling ends with Christy Ring in action for Cork against Tipperary and true to the paradox of movie-making, this was the first thing we photographed. It was a Sunday afternoon in 1960 in the Athletic Grounds beside the Lee. We had cameras on the sideline and cameras on scaffolds in the neighbouring Cork Showgrounds.
“Every lens was trained on Christy and we were staking all on the gamble that his performance would make a resounding climax to the film. He did not disappoint us and as the afternoon wore on, he cast his own unique spell to notch scores from all angles.
“At half-time when his personal tally was 2-2, I thanked Christy for his fine display. With a poker face and what might have been a twinkle in his eye he briefly replied: ‘I’m sorry, I could do no more.‘” — Seán Moran
Are you not entertained?
The difference between surprise and excitement.
When the hurling league was re-structured in a strictly hierarchical fashion, one of the basic expectations about Division 1A was that most of the games between teams from the same peer group would be close. So, what happens? Six games were decided by double-digit margins, and three others were decided by eight points or more.
Galway started the league with a 12-point defeat, and after they straightened themselves out, they finished it with two further 12-point defeats. Does that leave them straightened out or not?
A fortnight ago Limerick – the All-Ireland favourites - were on track for the league final, but by the end of their campaign they had lost at home to both of the relegated teams, Clare and Wexford.
For their part, Clare - the All-Ireland champions - lost all three of their home matches, while also shipping a pair of double-digit beatings along the way.
Did you see any of that coming?
There is a feeling that the hurling league is boring. Maybe it is. — Denis Walsh
Naughton sets a new high
All hail the Limerick footballers. Hidden in plain sight on the harum-scarum last day of the league was one of its best stories when Jimmy Lee’s side overcame a bad start against Waterford to win promotion to Division Three. If you paid it any heed at all, it was because of the eye-catching scoring of James Naughton, who ran in a stunning 4-12 of their 4-24 on Sunday.
Naughton’s achievement is most likely historic – it seems certain that it was a record individual tally in an intercounty football match, bypassing the 4-11 scored by Tyrone’s Frankie Donnelly against Fermanagh in 1957. But even so, the team achievement in getting out of Division Four is equally worth celebrating, given the context.
Limerick drew their opening game of the league away to Longford and lost at home to Wexford the following week. So what, says you. Teams go winless in their first two games and still get promoted all the time. Except that when Limerick lost that Wexford game, it was their 17th league fixture in a row without a victory.
It meant that by the time they played London a fortnight later, Limerick had gone two years, 10 months and 20 days since their previous league win. You had to go back to March 27th, 2022, when they beat Fermanagh to gain promotion to Division Two for the last time they walked off a league pitch knowing what it felt like.
So when they finally notched that 1-16 to 0-11 win in Ruislip on February 16th, 2025, you’d have forgiven Lee and his crew if they’d rested on their laurels. But they’re unbeaten since and have added three further wins to pip Wicklow to the Division Four final. They’ll be in Division Three in 2026. Good for them. — Malachy Clerkin
