Salvation is at hand via the wrongly maligned Tailteann
The begrudgery theorem states that the success of any initiative can be measured in direct proportion to the irritation it generates for the other shower. In the GAA, it’s the old can’t-do-right-for-doing-wrong conundrum.
Among other fuels, the GAA runs on begrudgery. The conviction that it is preferable for your neighbour’s car to break down than for you to have a perfectly smooth-running vehicle.
Hence the wailing about the Tailteann Cup. The whinging from the hurling side of the fence, specifically about why hurling doesn’t get the Tailteann Cup treatment.
The media launch. The TV coverage. The little hoopla that comes entwined in something shiny and new in an organisation soldered to custom.
The kind of zealotry, of straight-up promotion of which the GAA is rarely accused. Which is fair enough.
But go back again. Donal
Óg’s serrated description of the competition last year: a grand national for disappointed also-rans. What’s with the harsh vibes? What did the Tailteann Cup ever do to anyone?
How about this? Today, on the occasion of the competition’s third birthday, maybe let’s just celebrate it for what it is. A second tier inter-county football championship, yes. But also something else entirely. Something rare. A GAA initiative that only the deeply begrudging could judge as anything but a success.
GAA presidents don’t hang around long enough to see whether their flights of fancy take off. That’s the gig. If it’s a legacy you’re after, well, best nail it down in your three-year term.
You do wonder whether, in his administrative repose, John Horan affords himself the odd smirk, or taps out a few ‘I told you so’ WhatsApps. No, the concept wasn’t Horan’s baby. He did, however, deliver it. The old fashioned way, too. Big pushes. No epidural.
On the night it passed through Congress in 2020, the motion to split the football championship got 75.5 per cent of the vote. That’s a lot of political chicanery.
In fact, the notion that it might be a good idea to give weaker counties something to play for was a strand in the general conversation more or less since the old B championship went to the wall at the turn of the millennium.
But it was only a dreamy ideal. A unicorn. Nobody could put a viable shape on it. It existed in much the same way as giving the third-level competitions a more favourable window, or why bringing back the Railway Cup might be nice — and all the other well-meaning notions from the big file of unfulfilled good intentions. All very aspirational.
Getting it done and making it work were two different things, though. And in practice, the competition has delivered on its theoretical promises.
A longer championship season? Tick. Games against teams of a comparable quality? Tick. Proper promotion? A final in Croke Park? The chance to win a spot in the Sam Maguire championship the following year? Tick, tick and tick again.
At last year’s launch — Jack Cooney, the inaugural winning manager — spoke engagingly of the unexpected thrill of going all the way in 2022, joking that there were children in the county who think Westmeath are the All-Ireland champions.
He referenced the energy that the run naturally generated. Against his own expectation. “For us, it doesn’t matter if it is the Sam Maguire championship or Tailteann Cup, winning a championship game brings positivity and brings a really enjoyable environment, that is what the lads are experiencing at the moment,” he said.
This is the kernel of the Tailteann Cup’s unanticipated appeal. You’re in it. Why not try and win it? What else do you have to be doing? Where else would your supporters rather be?
Take Down. Two years ago, on the eve of the Tailteann Cup’s much anticipated maiden voyage, it would have been considered speculative in the extreme to try and identify a favourite.
How could you predict a winner from a competition comprising 16 teams when the suspicion was that a decent chunk of them had only half-arsed notions about it?
Down are this year’s favourites. No question. Not just because they seem the sturdiest team, but because they are also the most ambitious and the Tailteann Cup, with its All-Ireland spot for next year, feeds that ambition.
“We want to be playing against the best teams in Ireland, learning and challenging ourselves,” Down manager Conor Laverty said recently.
“I suppose any team wants to be competing the highest level possible and challenging yourself against the best players and I’ve put that to the lads and challenged them numerous times over the last number of weeks.
“Where do they want to go? What does their standard line want to be? What does their story want to be in a Down jersey? Do they want to play in Division 3 or do they want to challenge for better things?”
The prize for winning the Tailteann Cup? Better things.
Kildare are another of the competition’s most interesting contenders. Not in the slowly-unfolding disaster sense. But because of the potential now to avoid Armageddon.
“It is going to take a good bit of heart and determination from these fellas to get their heads down, and from all of us, which we will do,” Glenn Ryan noted after that gut punch of a loss to Louth. “Might let them away for a week and then get them back in and get back on the horse. All we can do.”
Kildare’s season has been a nuclear disaster. But still, in spite of everything, there remains something to go after. Not just in the search for lost kudos and identity, but to wake up from the bad dream that is 2024 and find themselves in next year’s All-Ireland series.
All is not lost. Salvation is at hand. There is, via the Tailteann Cup, a remaining chance to tint something bleak with a little light, all whilst re-engaging their disaffected support base along the way.
Makes you wonder why someone didn’t think of it sooner.