Time – just about – to take stock, now that the first competition in the football season has concluded and before the second throws in this weekend. What stood out from the league campaign apart from the general agreement that the new rules have earned a run in the summer?
Unlike last year, the Division 1 final didn’t leave anyone clamouring for more but both Kerry and Mayo won’t mind as long as they avoid the fate of Dublin and Derry, whose 2024 seasons fizzled out in disappointment.
This year’s may come with the usual weight of recency bias because of Kerry’s scorched-earth advance through the last two series of regulation matches, but if the final display didn’t warrant in Jack O’Connor’s words “too much kudos”, it was a 24th league title for the county as well as a satisfying capture of the Corn Mhíchíl Uí Mhuircheartaigh.
It also came with a dawning realisation that the experimental rules may suit Kerry as much as, if not better, than anyone. More space and pace in attack and even when threatened by relegation they were banging in more goals than any other team.
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Their curious apathy towards the new two-point score has been highlighted but you can’t divorce the choices defenders have to make around the 40-metre arc from the rampant fashion in which Kerry have found space to create goal chances.
The problem for O’Connor’s team is the perennial one. They won’t have a comparable match of Division 1 standard until the June bank holiday at the earliest and picking up the threads of performance can prove tricky when the most serious opposition is likely to come from Ulster and be a lot better tempered in competitive fires.
If that’s a sweeping dismissal of the Connacht counties, it’s based on the evidence of the past couple of years that have seen both Galway and Mayo capable of beating anyone on their day, but equally prone to bleak underperformance on other afternoons.
The trepidation that the Ulster teams create comes from a couple of sources: primarily their quality, but also Kerry’s peculiar difficulty with counties from the province. In the past 20 years, they have exited the championship six times at the hands of four different teams from the province: Armagh, Tyrone, Down and Donegal.
Comparative figures are six Leinster (all Dublin), two Connacht (Galway and Mayo) and one Munster (Cork).
Two of the last four All-Ireland winners, Armagh and Tyrone, are from Ulster and both have legitimate aspirations, whereas a third, the current provincial champions Donegal, are creating an impression that Jim McGuinness’s crosshairs have been trained on the Sam Maguire ever since Galway eliminated them last year.
In his original tour of duty, the Donegal manager took an Ulster title in year one, reviewed tactics at the end of the championship, tweaked them and won the All-Ireland in year two, which is the same juncture he is at in his current appointment.
No one county has inflicted more pain on Kerry than Dublin in the past 20 seasons. Six times, blue has trumped green and gold with the 2023 All-Ireland final the most recent instalment when the old gang got back together for one last job, but the following year made the mistake of hanging around and this time getting caught.
There is a difference between Dublin then and now – chiefly the loss of intellectual capital with so many retirements. That lack of experience and expertise in the final moments of the biggest matches will be felt in the absence of Brian Fenton, Paul Mannion and Jack McCaffrey, all of whom know what it is to exert decisive influence on All-Irelands.
Dessie Farrell’s younger troops acquitted themselves reasonably well in the league but the muscle memory that spooked everyone when flexed has atrophied. Although there remains totemic figures in Ciarán Kilkenny and Con O’Callaghan, there is no longer a critical mass of influencers to bend matches to the team’s will when a fraught endgame is playing out in Croke Park.
What about everyone else?
The now familiar split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 come the middle of May defines the last battle lines. League placings are finalised but for some at the bottom of Division 2, there will be great discomfort until provincial final pairings become clear.
What has transformed life for those counties whose main ambition is to qualify for rather than win Sam Maguire is the amount of effort they put into preparing for a championship that promises them little or nothing.
In the past, the pain of limited horizons was confined to one or two matches rather than an elaborate framework of fixtures designed to keep teams at the table.
Below Tier 1, Carlow have had to find a new manager on the very week of their opening Leinster Championship match against Meath, who coincidentally themselves suddenly lost a coaching ticket a few days ago.
Carlow are lucky to have someone as well suited as Joe Murphy, with credentials proven in Kildare as manager of Naas, and whose indefatigable, battling qualities on the field helped his county to win the old All-Ireland B title 31 years ago.
There needs to be a third tier for half of the Tailteann Cup counties, who are no more likely to win Tier 2 than they are the Sam Maguire.
Given the pressures on all intercounty players in terms of their training schedules and time commitments, the least they could be offered in return is a championship outlet with a realistic chance of success.
Lift-off in three days.
