We turn again to the national leagues, the faithful, droopy-eyed hound of the GAA family. Breezily ignored most of the time, casually put-upon the rest of it, the league is still there waiting for us every year, tongue out and tail wagging, ready to go along with whatever plans people have. The league doesn’t mind what you do with it. The league has never minded.
As it happens, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the first ever national football and hurling league finals. Dublin lost both of them, funny enough – to Laois in football and to Cork in hurling. They made the football final by default in the end, after two attempts at semi-final matches against Longford had to be abandoned because the crowd rushed the referee after disputed decisions. Clearly, the league was a battered entity from the off.
So it’s been around for a century, through thin and thin. We arrive at the 2026 version with the whole thing under a cloud again. The Allianz controversy has bubbled along for the past few months, to the point where we are heading into the opening weekend in a classic GAA holding pattern. Nobody knows if players are going to protest. Nobody knows if HQ will sanction them if they do. Nobody knows what that would even look like.
[ Pro-Palestine protesters gather at GAA headquarters to oppose Allianz sponsorshipOpens in new window ]
The GAA published its official position on the Allianz sponsorship at 6.21pm on the Friday before Christmas. They tasked their Ethics and Integrity Commission with spending a full three months picking through the complexities of the association’s longest-standing sponsorship as it applied to its second biggest competition – and then decided to release its findings at precisely the moment when the smallest possible audience would be paying attention.
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In a sense, it’s the perfect metaphor for how the league has been treated down through the generations. Lots of talk, lots of fine words and sincerity. And then, in the end, lots of shrugging and just getting on with it. The league trundles ever onwards, impervious to the myriad indignities visited upon it.
For once this year, neither league has a format change or any kind of quirky wrinkle built into it. This is no small thing. In each of the past SEVEN years, there has been something new or different in either the football or hurling league (or both) for players and managers and the paying public to get used to.
Last year it was the new football rules and the new hurling format. In 2024, the hurling league doubled as a sorting mechanism for the 2025 format. In 2023, the Walsh Cup final doubled as the first game of the hurling league (or vice versa, if you prefer). In 2022, the football league was linked to the championship for the first time. In 2021, Covid restrictions meant the football divisions were split into north and south subdivisions. The previous year, even before lockdown, there was yet another hurling league restructure.
The big thing in 2019 was yet more changes to the football rules, including the hated mark inside the 45. There was supposed to be a rule restricting the number of handpasses that year but it caused such interminable grousing from managers in the preseason competitions that it was nixed on the eve of the league. Remember this cri de coeur from one of the top managers of the time?
“I don’t see why the GAA should use its second competition to experiment with rules. If you want to make a rule change, fine. Get on with it then. Don’t be disrespectful to players. Don’t be disrespectful to supporters and in some way sponsors as well, by using the secondary competition to experiment.”
The words of none other than Jim Gavin, there. Dublin manager in 2019, of course, and future user of the league to carry out the biggest rules experiment ever conducted in the GAA. If the league had eyes, it would be forgiven for rolling them. But the league is long used to it at this stage.
So what have we got in prospect? Well, as stated, both the football and hurling leagues have the same format and structure as last year. Better yet, the fixture makers have found a free weekend to insert between the football final and the start of the provincial championships, which at least means that whoever gets there this time will be doing so with a full heart. No more Withnail-style getting to a league final by mistake.
We can say with a certain amount of confidence that 2025 was an anomaly. Mayo finished top of the pile in Division 1 with nine points, the first time a single-digit total has topped the league since 1996. Tyrone got relegated on seven points, the first time any team has ever gone down having amassed such a haul. And how about this for a stat to shake you to your socks: Tyrone finished with a +7 scoring difference and fell through the trapdoor, Mayo posted -1 and sailed through to the league final. Mad stuff.
That won’t happen again, now that the fear of having to suit up for a league final one Sunday and a provincial ding-dong the next has been removed. In fact, the vagaries of the fixture list could well mean that certain counties will deem themselves badly in need of a league final run-out, if only to fill the time.
The last round of the football league is on March 22nd, after which Kerry, Dublin, Donegal and Galway all have a full five weeks until they start their respective championships. What better way to spend one of them than in Big Game mode with everyone locked in?
Though Kerry are the defending champions, they might take a few weeks to get their sea legs underneath them. They fielded five current All Stars in last weekend’s McGrath Cup final losing effort, more out of necessity than any early season knuckling down. Jack O’Connor starts the year with around half of his All-Ireland final team either injured or elbow deep in the post-club finals Mardi Gras in west Kerry. Could be a while before all his guns blaze.
The chasing pack won’t sit around waiting on them. Too many teams have too many fixes to find to be wasting time shadow boxing. Ger Brennan and Andy Moran are expected to provide early bounces in Dublin and Mayo or face questions as to why they haven’t. Jim McGuinness, Pádraic Joyce and Kieran McGeeney are all juggling departures and arrivals like air traffic controllers in Puma Kings. Monaghan and Roscommon feel like interlopers, waiting for Tyrone and Derry to pass them on the way back up. Everybody is uneasy, ambitious and in a hurry.
For once, you can reasonably say the same about the hurling league. The fact that Tipperary won their All-Ireland in the summer by unabashedly laying down foundations in the spring surely changes the dynamic here. So many of the other teams had to spend the winter in varying states of self-flagellation, promising themselves they’d put it right in 2026. If Tipp weren’t too good to find themselves in the league last year, what’s to say any of the rest of them are this time around?
Everyone needs to go hunting in the hurling league. Tipp have a blood rush of underage talent to come in and shift the incumbents from their laurels. Cork were by a mile the best team in the country until they very suddenly weren’t, so they have to spend the next two months working out why. Limerick look like they need to repurpose themselves to either win another All-Ireland or break the whole thing up for good.
Kilkenny have won one league final in the past decade and no All-Irelands. That’s the same record as Waterford, who are no happier about it than Kilkenny. The work of replacing Clare’s warrior class can’t be put off any longer. Galway are always starting again. Offaly are in the top tier for the first time in 15 seasons. Dublin are coming, maybe.
Round and round it goes. In the worst of the weather, in the hurried crush of disappearing time, all the teams in both the codes set about the next two months trying to find the best of themselves. And all the while we’ll say it’s only the league, as if we could live a spring without it.
Throw it in and away we go.
