LEINSTER’S RACE IS RUN

Until proper allowance is made for superiority of the Dubs, the Leinster Championship will remain tortoise and hare torture...

IT is possible the collected works of Brazilian author Paulo Coelho may not be a huge hit in Portlaoise, but there are lessons to be learned for Leinster Council officials if they are of a mind to absorb them.

Coelho has such a gift for one-liners that they have been inevitably put to commercial use, particularly by the travel industry.

‘Travel is never a matter of money but of courage,’ he once wrote, without it ever being his intention that his wisdom would be used to sell high-end holidays.

Our personal favourite, though, was his pertinent warning: ‘If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It is lethal.’

Leinster Council, it would appear, would not agree.

Once again, in defiance of goodwill and good sense, they decided that travel is about money and adventure is far more dangerous than the mind-numbing tedium that is routine’s calling card.

You’d imagine Guglielmo Marconi shifted as uneasily in his grave as the rest of us did at our breakfast tables this week as for three successive mornings, Morning Ireland subjected the nation to the provincial championship draws.

Surely, he never thought his greatest invention would be used to inflict the kind of torture that makes waterboarding feel about as painful as a wedgie. On it went relentlessly with each broadcast concluding with the menacing threat of more to come.

But just when you think it can’t get any worse than making a song and dance out of a Championship which is still seven months away and is defined by its unfairness, lop-sidedness and overwhelming predictability, somehow the GAA still find a way to make this godforsaken concept even uglier.

In its only concession to selfawareness, Leinster decided not to hold a semi-final draw. It allowed most of the province to cling for as long as possible to the hope that their moment of humiliation could be delayed to the final – if they are lucky enough to avoid Dublin in the last four.

Westmeath are the winners of this year’s booby prize and will wait for seven months to share the company of a team that has beaten them by 59 points in their last three Championship meetings.

It means that if they are to play in the Sam Maguire next year – given that next weekend’s vote to introduce a second tier championship is a done deal – they will have to avoid relegation out of Division 2 this spring.

And if they pull that off, they know they will end up in a shark-filled qualifiers round next year after coming off a mauling.

However, there was one silver tinge to that black cloud and that was their expressed hope, which became a formal request, that they host Dublin in Cusack Park.

But within hours of the draw, it emerged that request would not be heeded with the game almost certain to go ahead in O’Connor Park, Tullamore – one of only three grounds outside of Croke Park where Leinster Council will consider fixing games involving Dublin.

Nowlan Park and Portlaoise are the others, which means that unless Dublin are drawn against Offaly or Laois they will not play at an opponents’ ground in the Leinster SFC. That said, when that opportunity fell Laois’s way in 2015, they were denied as Leinster Council cited a lack of seating capacity for Dublin’s season ticket holders with the tie moved to Kilkenny.

In the interim, either due to shrinking Dublin buttocks – which means they can fit two to a seat – or just shrinking crowds, O’Moore Park’s seating capacity is no longer an issue. Getting people to watch, though, is. Just over 14,000 paid in to see Dublin’s 26-point hammering of Louth this summer and, when you take into account that was the main event in a double header which also included Meath-Carlow, the real figure was closer to 10,000.

That is in keeping with the trend of declining attendances. Last year’s gate receipts were down 30 per cent which can be put down to a number of factors. However, the most obvious one being that in the race between a hare and a tortoise, even supporters of the speed merchant have grown weary of the spectacle.

And, yet, the Leinster Council seem oblivious to this reality and to the very notion of fairness. Here is a statistic that takes some digesting. In 1993, Jim Gavin made his Championship debut when Dublin beat Wexford in a preliminary round match at Wexford Park.

Since then, out of the 76 Leinster Championship games they have played just one has been played on their ground of their opponents – their often referenced 2006 scare in Pearse Park against Longford.

We are not suggesting Dublin’s monopoly of Leinster, which will next year see them canter to a 10th title in a row and a 15th in 16 years, is down to that statistic.

But if you put the team with the biggest pick and the most money and get them to play 65 out of 76 games at home, the chances are that you would be embarrassed into not making a semi-final draw as well.

Westmeath’s request for home

advantage is not based on giving themselves a shot at winning, it is rooted in promotion of the game.

Even with the pain that Dublin can inflict, there can still be a degree of honour, albeit a slightly perverse one, in playing them on your own patch.

They are our Harlem Globetotters – except that they play to win while they dazzle – and if they come to a town like Mullingar the sold-out signs on the 11,500 capacity Cusack Park will be slapped up.

And for an afternoon there will be a whiff of excitement, if not about a game then at least about an occasion. These days that is the very best that can be hoped for in the Leinster Championship.

But, instead, routine trumps reason to the lethal point that a nation risks drowning in its cornflakes.