We need to talk about Leinster. No sooner did the province’s hurling championship, after some geographical tweaking, produce a reasonably competitive field – three different winners in successive years for the first time since 1963 – than the football equivalent continued its descent into competitive obsolescence.
Westmeath’s first victory over Meath in a match that enthralled Croke Park was a highlight of the weekend but, however heartening that was, it’s a sub-plot in a worrying narrative.
We can argue over passing trends and urge caution about over-reacting to temporary problems but the mutation of the Leinster football championship from an exciting provincial competition into the sufferings of a tyrannised people has been alarming.
Dublin domination in the province is a fact of history. The biggest population centre with the strongest football tradition, the county’s success is not hugely different to similarly profiled counties in other provinces. What is different at present is the state of the Leinster championship. In days of previous domination, Dublin were at least occasionally challenged.
Taken as a four-year package, previous spells of supremacy – four years of success in the province leading to All-Ireland titles in the 1970s, 1990s and this decade – show that what is happening now is hardening into a trend.
Although the figures aren’t enormously different – average winning margins in Leinster during the decades in question have been 8.3, 6.5 and most recently 9.7. The rate of increase though is startling. In the last two years of Pat Gilroy’s management, the average margin of victory went from 4 to 7.6 in 2011 and 2012, whereas in Jim Gavin’s first two seasons, 2013 and last year, this climbed to 13 and 14.3 respectively.
The current winning average stands at 23 and, while the season isn’t over yet, Westmeath are being quoted at 25/1 to win the Leinster final and their handicap is around 16. In other words, the view is that they will be doing well to get Dublin’s average margin of victory below 20.
Nor is this all Dublin’s creation: another statistic from the four-year periods referenced above is that at no time previously have Leinster counties been so poorly represented in the top divisions of the league. Next season, for the second time in five years, Dublin will be the only county from the province in Division One.
Fluctuated
Twice in the past three seasons that division has contained two Leinster counties, a scarcity equalled only once in the eight years from the 1970s and ’90s (excepting the 1992 league, which was run on a ‘mixed-ability’ basis and allowing that the size of the top flight has fluctuated).
Next season just two Leinster counties, Meath and Laois, will join Dublin in even being in the top half of the Allianz Football League.
It goes without saying that this is not very good for Leinster, but neither is it ideal for Dublin. Former Leinster Council chief executive Michael Delaney pointed out nearly 10 years ago that Dublin’s ability to turn Leinster titles into All-Irelands was being compromised by the decline in Meath. “We could do with Meath becoming competitive again,” he said talking to this newspaper in August 2005, “because that would put more bite into Dublin and raise standards.”
Arguably Dublin’s most important year in building for the 2011 All-Ireland breakthrough was the previous season in 2010, when – forced into the qualifiers for the only time in the past 11 years – the county had the experience of piecing itself together in the light of lessons learned during a defeat by Meath.
With the benefit of four matches in successive weeks, the revival culminated in the shock defeat of Ulster champions Tyrone and was followed by a narrow defeat by eventual champions Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final.
No coincidence
[RATING] [/RATING]Not only do Dublin – or any other county perennially winning a province – lose out through the lack of competition but they are also deprived of the benefits of being exposed to the qualifiers, the arena in which teams can put to work the lessons learned in defeat.
It’s no coincidence Leinster is the only province not to have produced champions through the qualifiers – in Munster both Cork and Kerry have done it. If you don’t get tested early in the summer there’s no room for manoeuvre when August comes.
It was a feature of the most recent defeats in 2012 and last year that Dublin looked so perplexed when the challenge of Mayo and Donegal, respectively, erupted at them during All-Ireland semi-finals.
Sheer lack of familiarity with the rhythms of absorbing punishment, limiting damage and hitting back twice as hard told against the county in those matches.
It can be argued that All-Ireland fatigue may have played a role both years as Dublin were defending champions but it’s more probable that not having had a serious test up until those matches left them ill prepared.
In the case of last year’s semi-final against Donegal, Dublin weren’t even being seriously tested during the first quarter of the actual match so the shock of seeing a script ripped up on the field was even harder to process.
Triumph and disaster may be imposters but you have to learn how to deal with both of them.
smoran@irishtimes.com
