Mayo are due one... aren’t they?
NEXT Sunday is All Ireland football final day but for the first time in many years I haven’t been caught up in the hype or the scramble for tickets.
A family wedding on Saturday means I’ll be elsewhere when Joe McQuillan starts proceedings in Dublin 1 at 3.30pm on Sunday.
While the final is always a great occasion, there’s been something about the 2017 football championship that just isn’t right.
Dublin are way out there on their own ahead of a small chasing pack which includes their final opponents Mayo and to a lesser extent Kerry and Tyrone.
Everyone else is nowhere. In the mid 90s the GAA recognised they has a major problem with Gaelic football in the capital so they set about an ambitious plan to address it.
The plan worked spectacularly and Gaelic football is now thriving in the city and its suburbs. But what of the rest of the country.
Since 2005 Dublin have enjoyed an almost complete dominance in Leinster.
No county is remotely equipped to match them.
Even a rest of Leinster team would struggle to give them a game. Dare I say it, but the pick of the remaining 31 counties might not even be enough.
I can only hope that someone, somewhere, deep in the bowels of GAA Headquarters is working on a radical plan to restore some balance.
So what of Mayo’s chances on Sunday? Everything suggests a comfortable Dublin victory but they are overdue an off day. Aren’t they?