Meet Leinster football, the GAA problem child in need of attention

Merit in standalone provincial championships as crowds stay away

It could never happen now. It was never remotely threatened at a three-quarters deserted Croke Park on Sunday. In 1997, Meath were All-Ireland holders when they faced an unheralded Offaly in the Leinster final. The Faithful had finished top of Division 4 but nobody (bar Tommy Lyons?) could have foreseen the stunning performance that bequeathed a famous 3-17 to 1-15 win.

Through a remarkable decade from 1995 to 2004, Leinster football never had it so good. Six counties triumphed. In those first five years, Dublin once and Meath twice went on to lift Sam. And whereas that didn’t happen from 2000 to ’04, you still had five different provincial winners in successive years: Kildare, Meath, Dublin, Laois and Westmeath.

With so many fresh narratives, the crowds flocked to GAA headquarters.

How has it all gone so horribly wrong?

THE MARGINS

The simple answer, of course, is that Dublin got their act together and the rest couldn’t keep up. Cue a staggering run of 18 Leinster titles in 19 attempts.

Yet, for their first five-in-a-row (2005-’09) there was only one Leinster final massacre (crushing Wexford by 23 points in ’08). Exclude that and the average winning margin was under five points.

It was only when Dublin morphed into a superpower that the province completely lost its competitive edge. Since Meath fired five goals past Stephen Cluxton in 2010, Dublin have rebounded to win 40 consecutive Leinster fixtures and a record 13 straight titles.

In that period, Meath have lost all nine head-to-heads by a cumulative 108 points (12 per game). In other words, Sunday’s 16-point loss was not an outlier.

If only this were a Royal crisis, the province might have some hope. Instead, Dublin have won those last 13 finals by 164 points – an average of 12.6. On Leinster football’s biggest day, spectacular punishment beatings have been inflicted upon Westmeath (15 points in ’16), Laois (18 in ’18), Meath (21 in 2020), Kildare (14 in ’22) and Louth (21 in ’23).

True, Leinster is not alone. Kerry have won ten of the last 11 Munster SFC titles. In the last three finals they have crushed Cork (by 22 points), Limerick (by 23) and most recently Clare (by 14).

THE APATHY

The best metric is simply to track attendance figures for Dublin’s SFC meetings with Meath since that 2010 semi-final ambush, witnessed by 60,035.

Initially, at least, Leinster final attendances remained healthy: 69,657 in 2012 (a battling three-point defeat); 54,485 in ’13 (when Mick O’Dowd’s underdogs led at half-time only to lose by seven); 62,660 in ’14 (a 16-point wake-up call).

From that point onward, however,

Meath fans not only ceased to believe but stopped travelling – while Dubs started to pick and choose their outings.

There was some mitigation for the 42,259 that watched the Dublin/Meath and Kildare/Westmeath double-header in 2016 as the Republic of Ireland were in Euros knockout action that Sunday. Three years later, 47,027 watched the 2019 Leinster final. But after the Covid years brought a ban on fans (2020) and a capacity limitation of 18,000 (2021), we’ve had 38,081 at a 2022 semi-final followed by just 21,445 at Sunday’s quarter-final.

For this you can partly blame the April timing, facing European rugby and Premier League counter-attractions. You can equally suggest that the new SFC structure is convincing fans to wait for the bigger games. But there is one overwhelming reason: fans won’t be fooled by a match devoid of intrigue.

THE REACTION

It’s not just the public that doesn’t buy it. “The Leinster Championship is a shambles but that’s not Dublin’s fault,” admitted Meath boss Colm O’Rourke on Sunday. When Dessie Farrell was asked what he made of the game, he replied: “Next question.”

And when Seán Cavanagh appeared on The Sunday Game that night, he described the Leinster SFC as “pitiful” and suggested it might be a great championship if Dublin weren’t in it.

Certainly, anyone present for that day’s gloriously error-strewn double-header in

Portlaoise will concur that most counties would fancy their chances of winning a Dub-free Leinster. At times Louth and especially Kildare flirted with disaster against lower league rivals.

But still, the combined attendance was just 4,627 while 3,761 watched Offaly/Laois the night before. Fans know it: they are playing for second best.

THE POPULATION

With almost 1.5 million residing in the capital, the GAA’s county structure can never produce a level playing field. But this is no time for resurrecting that ‘split Dublin in two’ – or even four – mantra.

Instead, consider that Kildare is the seventh most populous county( with circa 248k residents) and Meat his eighth( with almost 221k). Why can’t they at least emulate the performances of Kerry (156k) and Mayo (138k) or Monaghan (65k) who beat Dublin in this year’s league and pushed them close in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final?

Moreover, Derry have just shown there is a way to topple the Dubs in Croker. And while they are the sixth most populous county (with over 252k) over 30pc of that figure put ‘London’ in their address!

THE SOLUTION

If it were that simple, there wouldn’t be a problem. There is clear merit in O’Rourke’s contention that Leinster “should be played before the league” … in the new world order of the split-season, it makes sense on so many levels to abandon the pre-season tournaments and start with standalone provincial championships before the league feeds into the Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cups.

Would the provinces lose some prestige? Undoubtedly. Attendances would surely drop too – albeit maybe not as much as you’d think, given the January appetite for matches.

Besides, what we have – in Leinster, Munster and to a lesser extent Connacht – is a broken model.

But this alone won’t save the likes of Meath or Kildare. Since the U-21 grade switched to U-20 in 2018, Meath have met Dublin six times in Leinster. They have lost all six, by margins ranging from 13 points (2020) to three points (last week).

Until their U-20s turn that tide, their seniors will always be swimming against it.