Mulligan exposes sick myth

EMLYN MULLIGAN has deflated Leitrim supporters but, in doing so, he exposed the myth that makes the football championship sick.

The county’s best footballer had enough of working himself to the bone for predictable defeat. He is taking 2015 off and, with his decision, the lie that the provincial structure benefits the smaller counties has been exposed yet again.

‘The saying goes that “You get out of it what you put into it”, and to be honest I don’t really feel that. I’ve been putting a lot into the game and not getting much out of it,’ said Mulligan (right).

Adherents of the present system use the likes of Leitrim to support their case: the joy they felt winning the Connacht title in 1994 is instanced as the kind of occasion that would be lost in an open draw.

Mulligan knows he will never win a Connacht title, just as footballers in Waterford, Clare and Antrim know they have little chance of provincial glory.

What’s seldom is wonderful, but it is not a justification for maintaining a structure that has petrified into stale predictability.

Football needs to change. The old defence that the weaker counties would be denied their shot at provincial glory under a revamped competition was seriously weakened by Mulligan’s plain, honest words. He has trained diligently year after year, all for the same result: a losing one.

Leitrim will never be a great power, but defending the tired orthodoxy, by pretending they could be, patronises the county and weakens the game.