Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
The feel good factor is back in football
WE GET something wrong in Gaelic football all the time — and it’s to do with the numbers game.
One number, in particular — four.
Four provinces, four divisions in the League.
But three is the magic number, though magic should be inside inverted commas.
We’ve had just one weekend of League football — and that was largely played in poor conditions in January.
What we saw in the opening round of games, though, confirmed what has been a trend for quite a while.
To me, it’s pretty clear that there are three tiers in intercounty football.
Factor in London and allowing for Kilkenny’s non-participation, there are 32 teams.
That’s a lot. In any sport, you won’t get 32 teams of an even standard. Not a hope.
That’s especially the case where you have counties of vastly different sizes.
But I do detect a shift that should give a lot of teams hope.
I see evidence of the gap to the top being closed.
If that continues, it would be a good thing, as it would give us more competitive games as well as giving more teams that great thing that keeps us all going in life — hope!
To me, there are three reasonably clear tiers in football in 2022. Galway, Derry and Roscommon are in Division Two but are in the top tier.
Competitive
Wicklow, Fermanagh and one of Longford/Louth could make the drop to the bottom tier.
If that was your League — with three tiers, it would be seriously competitive.
The fact that no team outside of Division One have won Sam Maguire since Armagh 20 years ago is testament to the strength of tiers.
While the typical January weather we endured last weekend most definitely heavily contributed to the three draws in Division One, I do think we have eight teams that will continue to take points from one another.
And I fully expect to see the relegation battle going down to the final weekend.
Dublin coming back into the pack is a great thing for football. Tyrone broke the mould last y ear a nd watching Armagh humble the Dubs in Croke Park l ast weekend added to the view that change is coming.
Playing in Croke Park all the time was held by some as a reason why the Dubs have dominated the sport.
What a load of nonsense. In reality, Dublin won all before them because they had a ridiculously great manager who was working with a set of ridiculously great players. What has happened since Jim Gavin left — and so many great Dubs retired — is the spread o f hope. Every team in the top tier can now seriously dream of lifting Sam Maguire on a hot Sunday in July.
I met a couple of friends from Armagh in a coffee shop earlier in the week and they were walking tall with a 2002-esque swagger about them — for the first time in quite a while!
They were talking about a full house tomorrow when Tyrone come to the Athletic Grounds.
They were buzzing at the prospect.
Of course I reminded them that t he A ll-Ireland champions wouldn’t be as naïve as the Dubs were — there was a feel of Championshiplevel craic in the first week of February.
Decade
That was brilliant to experience after almost a decade of trying to work out how the Dubs could be beaten and then the fear and gloom of the pandemic. The feel good factor is back in football! It might even be back in life...
It has to be said that the introduction of the Tailteann Cup this summer has further enhanced the competitive nature of our League.
The reality is, that for most counties, the League represents the only meaningful barometer of progress.
The Tailteann Cup may or may not change this — depending on how counties approach the competition. But I would be optimistic that it will get the proper respect that it deserves.
It should be embraced, in my view. What could be an issue is the possibility that some individual c ounties i nvolved decide to start dropping in club league fixtures.
To me, that could end up being the key challenge in the battle for engagement and respect.
Choose
It was the same with the Tommy Murphy Cup back in 2008. I remember situations back then where players were effectively being asked to choose to play for their clubs or counties on the same weekend.
If this happens with the Tailteann Cup, the credibility