This was supposed to be the real start of the football championship. After six weeks of aimless, unfocused jockeying for position, this coming weekend was when the rubber would meet the road.
Instead it feels like we could all do with a month off before the All-Ireland series begins. At least Louth, Meath, Donegal and Armagh get their two weeks…as...viewing public, we get under six days between the thrilling knife-edge endgame in Croke Park and throw-in at Pearse Stadium for Galway against Dublin.
The provincial championships were always going to matter to some teams. The side of the Leinster championship draw that didn’t include Dublin looked like a major window of opportunity for either Louth or Kildare. And in the midst of their celebrations this week it’s worth remembering just how close Louth came to ending up in the Tailteann Cup this year.
It was very small margins that had Kildare playing Leitrim on Saturday instead of Meath on Sunday. When they sat down to watch the Leinster final the Kildare players would have been forgiven for thinking that it really could, and maybe should, have been them.
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Armagh’s desperation to put a first Ulster title since 2008 with last year’s All-Ireland title was painfully evident in Clones, and their disappointment was at least matched by Kevin McStay’s Mayo, who had targeted the Connacht championship as a measurable, decisive win for them. Their dejection in Castlebar last Sunday week was just as obvious and unhidden.
Only in Munster could it be reasonably stated that no one was too upset or too ecstatic about how the provincial championship went. Cork were bitterly disappointed not to take Kerry down in extra-time of their semi-final, but having had a few weeks to digest where and how that game turned they should be feeling pretty upbeat about their chances of progression from a group that includes Roscommon and Meath – and puts them back on a collision course with Kerry in the Páirc again.
Kerry got the cup, a few goals to go with it, and some game time into Seán O’Shea. Clare are back in the Sam Maguire again after a third appearance in a provincial final in a row; they have Down at home first up this Sunday, and I’m sure they see absolutely no reason why that’s a game they wouldn’t win. And that alone might be enough to get them into a preliminary quarter-final.
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But this has been a strange year for the provincial championships. More than ever they appear to have survived and thrived on their own merits. Outside of Louth/Kildare they were looked on by teams as things worth winning in their own right, not as part of mounting tension leading to an All-Ireland final.
The Leinster final felt not just like a final from a time before Dublin’s domination began but from the 1990s. The sense that there was no tomorrow for either team, or either set of supporters, was crystal clear from the outset. No one was thinking about which group they’d rather end up in – in fact the feeling I got was that barely anyone in the crowd would have been able to tell you who their prospective opponents were in the All-Ireland series should they win or lose. It’s part of what gave the game such a special flavour – a feeling that this was the culmination of their season. It felt like an All-Ireland final in that respect.
Galway and Mayo fans would have known exactly what group awaited the winners and losers of the Connacht final, but they went ahead and fought to the death for it anyway.
And maybe that’s the lesson from the last couple of weekends. It would be easy to say that the recent drama means we’re saddled with provincial championships again for another 10 or 15 years – allowing them to remain as an anachronism, an immovable barrier to the introduction of a championship structure that is fairer to all teams.
Another way of looking at last weekend’s finals, and the Connacht final, and even Cork/Kerry before that, is that they were games and cups that teams were desperate to win on their own merits regardless of what happened after.
Galway wanted to beat Mayo because there was a Connacht final at stake, and because it was Mayo. Would they be more confident of progressing to the All-Ireland series going into this weekend, with Cavan at home instead of Dublin in their first game? Yes. But winning the Connacht final trumped all that – and no one in Galway would swap places with Mayo right now.
Provincial finals will always be played at some stage in the year. It just seems like they’re too rich, too freighted with history to go now. There are some who’d suggest that they should be played before the league, and get them out of the way. That idea certainly has merit.
But I remain wedded to the idea of playing them like the FA Cup, sprinkled throughout the season, with rounds on the May bank holiday, the June bank holiday and the first Sunday in July. If you were looking for evidence that these are trophies that exist as their own entity, and are deemed worth winning in their own right, look no further than the last two weeks.
