Council’s U-turn ignores fairness
‘We’re looking at the strong possibility we won’t have Dublin in Croke Park for the Leinster semifinal. We didn’t make a decision on it at the time of the draw because semi-final pairings won’t be known until later in the summer, but the likelihood is that we’ll consider that move. It would be better to have 20,000 in Portlaoise or Tullamore or Nowlan Park than 30,000 in Croke Park’ — Leinster Council chairman Pat Teehan, March 29.
IT turns out that the strong possibility that Dublin would play in a Leinster semi-final outside of Croke Park for the first time in 26 years was not really that strong after all.
Instead, Meath will face an away game in a provincial semi-final on Sunday week, a decision confirmed by the Leinster Council last Monday morning. That was little over a month after their most senior official had suggested — on the morning after Division 1 had become a Leinster-free zone — that it would not be the case.
Dublin and Kildare were just two of the five Leinster counties who filled the six relegation places across the League’s top three divisions, and Teehan seemed to acknowledge that the clamour to see the business end of his council’s football Championship might not be overwhelming.
Somewhere along the line, though, there was a change of heart and the reasons are unclear.
Perhaps it was down to last Sunday night’s semi-final draw, but Dublin/Kildare would put far more pressure on the Croke Park turnstiles than Dublin/ Meath, a rivalry that has all but been anaesthetised by a series of humiliations on a Croke Park pitch that has become a killing field for Royal County football.
It has also been suggested that with neither game being shown live on television, it may lead to an unprecedented rush by the public to catch the live show.
It is 10 years since Meath were competitive enough to be involved in a one-score game against Dublin, with the average margin of defeat in the six games since running at over 13 points.
True, last year was a six-point game and Dublin have come back to the pack, but the problem in Leinster, with the exception of Kildare, is that everyone else is regressing at an even faster rate of knots.
Meath’s achievement this spring was avoiding the prospect of playing in the Tailteann Cup.
In that sense, wherever Dublin play Meath, the outcome is unlikely to be impacted by the venue, but that should never be used as an excuse to gift the province’s strongest team home advantage. It is a precious thing, something that the Cork footballers decided to protect by threatening to effectively withdraw from this year’s Championship if the Munster Council did not change its mind and return this weekend’s semi-final to Páirc Uí Rinn.
Munster was keen to put the tie on in Killarney in the knowledge that there would be a healthier return on gate receipts, but Cork reminded them that you can’t put a price on on fairness.
They got their way and while it may all turn out ugly by Saturday evening, they have at least offered their clash with Kerry a vague scent of intrigue that would not have existed had the game taken place in Killarney.
Intrigue is something that has long departed a Leinster SFC in which Dublin seek to win a 17th title in 18 years.
There are many reasons why a Championship has been reduced to an annual coronation ceremony, the most potent of which is that this run has coincided with the existence of the greatest team that has ever played the game.
There are other issues centred on how well intentioned plans to develop Dublin GAA turned into weaponising a superpower, but perhaps the most shameful has been the lack of vision in milking a cash cow until it has run dry.
Allied to the GAA’s decision to allow Croke Park become Dublin’s home, the Leinster Council saw nothing wrong in fixing every Dublin Championship game for Croke Park between 2006 to 2015, until they were finally embarrassed into moving the quarter-inals to a neutral venue. Last year, Dublin played an away Championship match for the first time in 15 years when they travelled to Wexford Park. The best team in the land playing on their home pitch for the majority of their games against lower-tier opposition delivered such predictable results that the competition itself is now on life support. The fall-off in footfall has been dramatic. When Dublin beat Meath in 2012 in that onescore game, it was watched by 70,000, but when they met in the 2019 final — the last to be played without Covid crowd restrictions — the attendance was 47,000.
But it was not just supporters who got tired of bearing witness to a sporting massacre.
For the last couple of years, the Leinster Council has broken with the practice of the other three provinces, who make their draws in full by delaying the semi-final draw until after the quarter-finals have been played.
It has been done to ensure that the bad news as to which teams have been placed on Dublin’s side of the draw is kept as late as possible to avoid disillusionment.
It would have been far more pragmatic had the Leinster Council recognised the advantages they gifted Dublin by ensuring, at the very least that all games outside of their final should be played at neutral venues.
Instead, for a few dollars more they simply can’t help themselves.