Today’s Previews
Ulster SFC quarter-final Donegal v Derry, MacCumhaill Park, 4.00pm.
Referee: D Coldrick (Meath)
By virtue of the lack of other distractions, the suggestion has been building all week that the football Championship may witness its first true shock of the summer here.
God knows it could do with it as even Ulster’s status as the most competitive Championship has taken a kicking with none of the opening three games producing a losing margin in single figures.
There is a semi-plausible case to be made for Derry, based on a five-game winning streak, a manager in Rory Gallagher who has a real knowledge of their Donegal opponents and who has built a formidable spine to his team in the likes of Chrissy McKaigue, Brendan Rogers, Gareth McKineless, Conor Glass and Shane McGuigan. Indeed, Derry may well prove to be a more than competent Division 2 team – perhaps even a Division 1 team in time – but Donegal are on a completely different level as one of three teams capable of challenging Dublin for the All-Ireland.
And because that is their focus, they will hardly stress-test Michael Murphy’s recovery from a hamstring complaint here (although he will be on the bench just in case of an emergency) but then they will hardly need to.
They are hardly shy of leaders and the form of Ryan McHugh, Michael Langan and Patrick McBrearty
against Down suggests that they are more than capable of holding themselves together in Murphy’s absence. They will do the business again today while Derry’s success will be found in a single-digit losing margin.
Verdict: Donegal
Connacht SFC semi-final
Mayo v Leitrim,
Elverys MacHale Park, 2.00pm. Referee: F Kelly (Longford)
If we didn’t know better, we would suspect that there is a concerted campaign within the GAA to whet the appetite for radical reform of the Championship format by giving this encounter a prime time slot.
The truth, though, is more mundane – a condensed knockout Championship with so few genuinely competitive fixtures means that this non-contest will have to be endured as a live TV spectacle.
Mayo, permanent members of the Championship’s top four, against lovely but lowly Leitrim, permanent members of football’s bottom four, how you do think this is going to play out?
It would be interesting to hear how advocates of the provincial system would put forward the case that a fixture such as this does a service to the two teams involved, the Championship and the watching public.
But they don’t have to make that case, they simply get to vote for the status quo that has been killing the competition for an age.
Mayo