Dublin would be an unwelcome guest in Ulster
LAST week, the Championship perched itself on a mountain top with all eyes fixed on it as it pulled back its head and inhaled a deep, purposeful breath to prime the vocal chords for an almighty roar, only to project a whimper so quiet that barely anyone took notice.
We rave about the Ulster Championship being one of the best competitions in Gaelic football — and it is — but last weekend was a let-down, there is no way of dressing that up.
Antrim were always going to follow the defensive blueprint against Down, especially after watching Westmeath garner so much success with it, and Fermanagh would have hoped that home advantage might help make the game tight against Armagh, but both dreams were dashed to dust.
Down’s laborious victory over Antrim will be one of the toughest watches you will see this year, but there is hope because this weekend the big boys come to town and Jim Mcguinness reignites his rivalry with Mickey Harte when Donegal lock horns with Derry.
Even Tyrone’s game against Cavan has peaked people’s intrigue because Raymond Galligan’s men are riding the crest of a wave, while the Red Hand County are crashing down from one after their humiliation against Dublin in the League.
Anything can happen, and it’s that unpredictability that makes Ulster so exciting. You don’t get it in the other three provinces.
Connacht is at least a twohorse race between Galway and Mayo this year but Kerry will definitely win Munster, while Dublin may as well just collect the Leinster trophy now and not bother playing the remaining games.
It was for this reason, following the Dubs’ dismantling of Meath last Sunday, that Sean Cavanagh proposed that they should maybe even be taken out of the Leinster Championship and play in either Connacht or Ulster, in order to make it more of a competition for them.
The Tyrone legend makes a good point in the sense that no other Leinster team outside of Dublin play their football in Division One, with the rest hovering in the second, third and fourth tiers. Ulster, on the other
‘The likelihood is Dessie Farrell’s men would have rolled over that developing Derry team’
hand, boast a quartet of Derry, Donegal, Armagh and Tyrone in the top flight, with Monaghan and Cavan playing in Division Two.
The standard is undoubtedly better, but how much of that is because a team like Dublin are not running rampant in it?
Are teams in Leinster so poor because of the lack of quality in those counties, or is it because Dublin has steamrolled their spirit, year after year, and squeezed out any remaining traces of hope and ambition?
We love the Ulster Championship, but we have to be honest with ourselves — how many would Dublin have won if they competed there in the last 10 years? There is a fair argument to be made that they could well have won all 10.
Derry conquered the dominating Dubs in the League Final less than a month ago and are now fit to compete with them, but if they shared a provincial Championship, would they even be the force we see now?
When the Oak Leafers won the Ulster title two years ago, it was their first in over two decades and they were still in Division Two at the time, but that victory was a box ticked in their development and they ramped it up again the following year by going back-to-back, now becoming the firm favourites.
However, the likelihood is that Dessie Farrell’s men would have rolled over that developing Derry team before they even really got going, and progress would have been drastically delayed if not halted entirely.
The provincial Championships need to be changed, whether that’s the format or the time of year that they are played in, but one thing is for certain — I don’t want to see the Boys in Blue making the trip up north any more often than they need to.