Seán Moran: Provincial football titles still matter to counties like Tipperary

There's no point getting too sentimental about it because the odds are graphically unimpressed by the likelihood of a contest but this weekend, an unusual Munster final will be taking place in Killarney.

Tipperary footballers haven't faced Kerry in a provincial final without the assistance of an open draw for 72 years.

There’s not a whole heap of talk about this for the simple reason most outside of the county and a few within are anxious that Tipp will get a pitiless beating from champions Kerry – maybe with the sort of symmetry that saw Kildare similarly get high from beating Cork last year before running into the green-and-gold propellers shortly afterwards.

Elite sport is not an equal opportunities employer and doesn’t operate a handicap system and so, on teams have to go after springing surprises – living the Peter Principle on grass until they run into an irresistible force.

In a way elite sport is an oxymoron in Gaelic games. The precepts of competitiveness from which sport derives its fascination are at odds with the definition of 'elite' as a group set apart and in the GAA a very small group. In football it's created a championship that used to have to wait until the August bank holiday to ignite the real heat of public interest and now has to be postponed even longer until the All-Ireland semi-finals.

When people talk about restructuring the championship to have more matches and greater opportunity and to shelve the anachronism of provincial competition it can be forgotten that the provinces provide an outlet through which teams can register mezzanine achievements, which they understand are probably as much as is realistically on offer.

Ten years ago Leinster Council wistfully acknowledged that its efforts to stimulate standards in various counties had militated against the winning of All-Irelands, which teams from the province were unable to do for 12 years during which period Kildare, Laois and Westmeath all won senior titles and just prior to which Offaly had done the same.

Throw in Dublin and Meath and that's half the competing counties. It's safe to speculate that for all the anxiety at not bringing home Sam Maguire provincial officials might these days hanker after a happy medium rather than the current situation in which the perennial All-Ireland favourites live in the province but none of the other counties have a meaningful competitive existence at elite level.

Next year Leinster’s league status will not be improved in any way despite a handful of promotion and relegation movements. There will still be just three counties in the entire top half of the league and just one in Division One.

Provincial titles aren’t a fast track to All-Ireland contention any more but for some counties they are an epochal milestone even allowing that the qualifiers have made a longer and less reliable road out of the rest of the journey.

It depends on what you’re used to. Meath didn’t derive an enormous hit from winning Leinster in 2010 and not just because of the unorthodox refereeing that handed them the title – more because a match later they were well beaten by neighbours Kildare.

Having won All-Irelands around a decade previously, a provincial title trailing those sorts of provisos isn't as great a cause for jubilation as Westmeath or Laois a few years before and notwithstanding that they lost to Ulster qualifiers.

For counties which haven’t won in a long time a provincial title makes their year. Monaghan, twice in the past three seasons, illustrate that point even if they haven’t been able to translate their best form onto the pitch in Croke Park.

All of this is particularly true in Munster, which has been shared by the Cork-Kerry duopoly for most of its history and especially so for the past 80 years during which time just one other county has made off with the title. This is the world into which Tipperary carry their aspirations next Sunday.

They almost joined John Maughan’s Clare team from 1992 when 10 years later Cork escaped with what was in its way – selling the argument to Munster Council that the 21 replacements they had used in the drawn final had in fact been 20 – as much a sleight of hand as Meath in 2010.

In those days there was no suite of options available to the authorities: unauthorised numbers on the pitch meant the match was forfeit.

Tipperary manager Liam Kearns has been down this road before and brought greater status to Limerick than the county had enjoyed in more than a century when he managed their under-21s to a first Munster title in 2000 and followed that with a startlingly comprehensive dismantling of then provincial champions Cork in 2003.

It must still haunt him that that Limerick team had the beating of Kerry both later in the same summer – when a series of chances in an opening blitz went untaken – and also a year later when only Darragh ó Sé fetching a series of balls on his own goal-line denied them a win and it took extra time in the replay to separate the teams.

A former Kerry player in the O’Dwyer years, he has had to put up with a succession of departures from his panel this season transforming Tipperary from a side poised to benefit from various breakthroughs at under-age and club level into one which struggled to get 1,000 supporters out in Thurles.

He and his team go to Fitzgerald Stadium knowing that if they could somehow win, this year would live forever regardless of what happens in August.

e-mail: smoran@irishtimes.com