Talk is cheap... espcially if you can’t walk the walk
ONE OF the biggest challenges I have faced since I started writing on this page is trying to look at things through very different lenses. It is easy for me to write about how these few weeks in the buildup to the Championship leave me giddy with anticipation because I simply knew nothing else.
There was a not a single summer when I did not start out not thinking about September and the prospect of bringing it all back home on a giddy Monday night in Killarney.
You can call that arrogance if you want, but I call it belief. No Dublin player will tell you that, of course, but you can bet those same thoughts are running right through their heads. It is how winners think.
The challenge is trying to get inside the heads of players who will set out this summer knowing that it is going to end up the same miser able way as it the previous year, and the year before that, and year before that again.
In all my years playing, even though the likes of Clare, Tipperary and, in particular for a few years, Limerick pushed us hard I can honestly say that there was never the slightest doubt that we would beat them every time.
I suspect that in their dressing room, no matter how bullish the pre-match and no matter how hard they closed their eyes to envisage, they could never really see themselves beating us. That mental picture came a lot easier to Cork, which is why the Munster Championship has been a two-horse race for the bones of a century.
That’s one more horse than is running in Leinster, where someday they will hold an official launch of this summer’s Championship, when the world and its mother knows that no such thing exists. What we will witness is a cornonation and you suspect that even Dublin have become bored of that ceremony.
Why else do you think Jim Gavin chases down spring success so ruthlessly and when it is achieved then gives his players an extended break, in sharp contrast to every- one else. Leinster is a snooze cruise and he knows it. The thing is so does everyone else.
Take Kildare. They were supposed to be quite literally the great white hope in Leinster and even took plaudits last summer for keeping the losing margin in the Leinster final to single digits.
That turned out to the first of nine defeats on the bounce — 12 if you are into the business of counting the O’Byrne Cup as real games of ball — and they are now a dead team walking.
I am sure, though, if Cian O’Neill or one of his players are asked at next week’s launch they will tell everyone they are in it to win it.
Then again, talk is cheap but do they really believe it? I think we all know the answer to that.
Their current losing run reeks of a team which does not believe it is playing for anything more than time, but they’re not the only ones.
Look, I am a traditionalist at heart but I can afford it.
One of my great early childhood memories is going hand-in-hand with my late father to watch Kerry play Cork in a Munster final.
You know how you get a mental picture of summer’s past and some of you might remember fun holidays spent by a Spanish pool, well my summer high jinks was slurping a 99 on the way back, and beating Cork was my chocolate on top. But is that enough to justify retaining the provincial championships?
Or is the fact that the Ulster Championship is so competitive — in truth that is also a little overegged in that it has become a three-horse race this decade between Tyrone, Donegal and Monaghan, and someday soon their lack of size and the pull of gravity will take the latter down.
Connacht has never been healthier with three Division 1 teams chasing the Nestor Cup, but in a few years’ time where will it be? Where will we all be?
There has to be a better way and a recent tweet I received from a football enthusiast might provide the pathway.
He suggested that the provincial championships be played as a standalone competitions, with the All-Ireland series consisting of eight groups of four based, seeded by National finishing positions.
That would see a team from each Division make up the groups, and provide added incentive to those teams chasing promotion in the spring because their seeding status would be bumped up by one.
The top two teams in each group go into straight knock-out Sam Maguire play-offs, the bottom 16 into an All-Ireland ‘B’ Championship with both deciders played on the same day at the end of August.
I like the cut of that proposal, although with some modifications.
A window has to be kept open for the club game, which means that it serves little purpose to persist with the provincials as standalone competitions, and we need to let them go. If that proves too difficult, they should simply take the place of the existing pre-season competitions.
The beauty of this format is that every team is guaranteed a minimum of four Championship games, and are, to a point, in charge of their own destiny from the moment they take their first kick in spring.
To add a sense of fairness and intrigue, the bottom seeds — ie Division 4 teams — should be given two home games in the group stage.
Can you imagine the stir it would create in Leitrim if Dublin had to come calling to Carrick-on-Shannon or Kerry were sent up the road to Aughrim. It would give something for everyone to look forward and aspire to.
It might also light the kind of fire that is burning Carlow’s jets right now, and ensure that the summer belongs to everyone and not just the elite few.
The forgotten deserve that. The game deserves it too.