Meath provide the break in the chain as Dublin fall at last in Leinster
This then is the break in the chain.
The retirement of Ross Munnelly in late 2022 was a landmark departure – as at that time the Laois forward was the last remaining player throughout Leinster to have beaten Dublin in a provincial senior football championship match.
Laois beat the Dubs in 2003 on their way to a famous Leinster final success that summer. Westmeath won the provincial title in 2004 while Meath claimed it in 2010. But apart from that Dublin swept up the lot, 19 titles in 20 years.
Intercounty football careers in Leinster came and went, medal-less. By the time Munnelly retired no player in the province knew what it took or what it felt like to beat Dublin in a Leinster SFC fixture.
The Meath players who saw off Dublin in 2010 had drifted away to intercounty retirement. Bryan Menton was involved in the extended Meath squad that summer but did not make his debut until 2011. He is the last remaining link, but until Sunday Menton had never beaten Dublin on the field. The Dubs owned Leinster.
As Dublin’s dominance of the province grew those behind the tourism concept of “Ireland’s Ancient East” considered bespoke excursions from the capital to surrounding counties to catch a glimpse of the lesser-spotted non-Dub Delaney Cup winner. But everybody quickly agreed finding such a rare creature in the wild was far too ambitious and instead poured their energies towards a much more practical plan of bringing white-water rafting to Dublin’s docklands.
However, the washed-up Leinster SFC has finally come up for air. Meath’s victory over Dublin on Sunday has ensured a new crop of current players will now get their hands on a Leinster medal. Louth’s last provincial success was in 1957.
Gaelic football in “Ireland’s Ancient East” might just have got a new lease of life. – Gordon Manning
GAA calendar going from feast to famine is not working
It is clear that the GAA calendar is still broken. This weekend so much was going on that the bandwidth of everyone’s attention was over-stretched. The All-Ireland hurling champions were beaten, the All-Ireland football champions were nearly beaten, Dublin lost a Leinster championship match for the first time in 15 years, a player was sent off in the first minute of a Munster championship match for probably the first time ever, there was a thrilling hurling game in Parnell Park and who knows what other bits and pieces fell through the cracks.
Next weekend? Three matches. One hurling game at teatime on Saturday in Munster, the Connacht football final and a Munster football final that is devoid of suspense or general public interest. That game, however, will still command a precious spot on live terrestrial TV.
The intercounty championship season is so short that the distribution of interesting matches must be more judicious. Good stories must be given more oxygen. Nobody could have foreseen Dublin losing in Portlaoise, but it wasn’t hard to envisage captivating storylines from the other headline games around the country. One of the beauties of the championship is that you never know what might happen. Some allowance must be made for stuff from the blind side.
With its two-hour slot The Sunday Game couldn’t have been expected to give all of these games the attention they deserved. Instead, everything was bite-sized and swallowed without much chewing.
Next weekend? There might not be a whole pile to digest. Crazy. – Denis Walsh
Ulster says no to Croke Park day out
The loss of McKenna Cup revenue, as a result of the suspension of secondary provincial competitions, appears to have haunted the Ulster Council of the GAA – and Armagh.
It was seen as one of the reasons behind the reluctance to fix the Antrim-Armagh match for Corrigan Park – on the basis that the council had lost enough without putting the well-supported All-Ireland champions into a venue with such a small capacity (4,000).
A combination of Antrim outrage and relative Armagh indifference to where the fixture was played meant that it went ahead in Belfast rather than Newry.
Then there was the suggestion that were Armagh and Donegal to make the Ulster final, it could be played in Croke Park to accommodate the potential crowds. This went down poorly with Donegal, for whom the final will be a fourth championship match in just under five weeks.
Having dispatched Down in Sunday’s semi-final, the provincial champions’ manager Jim McGuinness had this to say:
“Our supporters have been through enough with three games in three weeks; that’s a lot of money out of everyone’s bank accounts when you’re bringing kids.
“I firmly believe that our supporters shouldn’t be going to Dublin and the expense that incurs. A lot of families in Donegal are saving money and not doing other things so they can follow Donegal. And that has to be respected, so we’ll be pushing for Clones without a doubt.”
Asked after Saturday evening’s epic against Tyrone about the prospect of Croke Park, McGuinness’s Armagh counterpart Kieran McGeeney had a weary response.
“I wouldn’t have a clue about that stuff. There are some things well above my head – like when I’ve found in the past when I give an opinion, it normally ends up being the opposite. So, I just tend to keep my mouth closed about them, hard enough as that’s to believe.”
The final was duly fixed for Clones on Saturday, May 10th, as part of a double bill with the counties’ women footballers, who also contest the provincial final.
The Ulster Council aren’t doing too badly this year in the championship. There were 21,288 in Clones on Saturday evening for the Armagh-Tyrone semi-final.
It might not compare with the heyday of the rivalry and 19,361 turning up for a McKenna Cup semi-final in Casement Park in January 2006 or the 60,186 who attended the previous year’s Ulster final in Croke Park, with 31,594 at the replay and of course the 2003 All-Ireland final, 79,391 (capacity before the stadium redevelopment was concluded) – but it was a decent modern attendance, particularly for a Saturday.
Needless to say, though, the venue will be a full house on Saturday week, even with the unconventional 5.25pm throw-in. – Seán Moran
Cork go from slow starts to sloppy second halves
During Pat Ryan’s first season as Cork manager, and in the early rounds of the 2024 league, Cork had a propensity for slow starts. Eight points down against Limerick at half-time – at home – in the 2023 league; eight points down against Clare in Ennis in the 2023 Munster championship; five points down at home to Tipp half way through the second half in 2023; nine points down at home to Kilkenny in the 2024 league after less than half an hour.
That costly habit has been comprehensively rooted out. So far this year, in league and championship, they have led by 10 points at half-time against Wexford; nine points at half-time against Clare in the league and 12 points at half-time in the championship; 13 points at half-time against Tipperary in the league final and 10 points at half-time in the championship match; six points at half-time against Galway – having played against the wind.
But it has been replaced by a succession of sloppy second halves, where their concentration and productivity dropped in tandem. Ryan was unhappy with elements of the second half against Clare in the league, Galway in the league, the league final against Tipp, the second half against Clare in the championship, and again on Sunday against Tipp.
“We did well enough in the first five or six minutes [of the second half],” said Ryan. “After that they got a bit of easy ball out. Our energy wasn’t high enough, we weren’t pressing high enough, we weren’t working hard enough. They were able to work the ball even without a spare man and create some excellent scores.”
The 70-minute performance is a mythical creature. But in their quest for the ultimate prize Cork will need to be better for longer. – Denis Walsh
Louth sense opportunity in 2010 Leinster final revival
We were finishing up a quick pitchside chat with Craig Lennon in the aftermath of Louth’s win over Kildare on Sunday when thoughts briefly turned to the Leinster football final. In that moment in time it still felt like a very different prospect for Louth.
By edging past Kildare in Tullamore, 1-18 to 0-18, Louth set up their third successive Leinster final appearance, a feat only ever achieved once before in their history, in 1912-13-14. They beat Dublin in the 1912 final, and lost to Wexford in both 1913 and 1914.
Dublin had been their opponents the last two years, winning by 21 points in 2023, and by four points in 2024. In that moment in time on Sunday, there was no great reason to believe Dublin wouldn’t be their opponents again. Could Louth close the gap even more this time?
“Third time lucky maybe?” said Lennon, the 2024 All-Star wing back, when asked about the prospects for Sunday week’s final. “Ah, I shouldn’t have said that!”
Stories may soon emerge of exactly where Louth were situated when discovering Dublin had been beaten by Meath in the later semi-final on Sunday, setting up a changing of the Leinster guard for the first time since 2010 when Meath also beat Dublin in the Leinster semi-final.
As seismic a shock as that was it also set up a Leinster final between Louth and Meath, a repeat of the 2010 showdown, when Louth were left understandably aghast when Joe Sheridan smuggled the ball over the line in the 74th minute for a controversial Meath goal as they won 1-12 to 1-10.
Given Dublin’s dominance since that was Meath’s last provincial title. Louth haven’t won a Leinster crown since 1957.
At this moment in time Louth may well feel this is the chance to get some revenge for that 2010 final defeat, further motivated by the sense fate has played into their hands. The only problem is that Meath will feel similarly motivated, that their victory over Dublin will count for nothing unless they win the title outright.
“Just trying to change the script I suppose,” added Lennon, again not knowing Meath would be their opponents. “We’re heading in the right direction.”
After the hard sell of the Leinster football final the last number of years, suddenly this is one not to be missed.– Ian O’Riordan
