SHANE McGRATH
ULSTER FOOTBALL’S HAD ITS DAY
BIZARRE traditions persisted around the arrival of the New Year in this country for a very simple reason – fear. They may not be practiced widely now but, in living memory, people would open both the front and the back door on January 1 in order to let in good luck and let out the bad.
In regions of Ireland, it was considered terrible bad luck to give anything away on New Year’s Day, for fear of handing over your good fortune for the year with it.
These are superstitions that raise nothing more than a smile now, but they lingered for generations because of fear. Failure to honour well-worn customs could carry a cost. The consequences of placing Ulster football in its proper context come with no such dread, unless there was an apocalyptic paragraph buried in a convention report that slipped by unnoticed.
But the failure in recent times to properly evaluate the strength of Ulster’s teams is the result of a fear of being wrong, thus the reluctance to judge a province that earned the right to be considered innovative and powerful through the 1990s and the 2000s, but which has been living off that reputation since.
The mythology around the Ulster Championship has been as carefully nurtured as any other branch of folklore on the island. Where seanchaís and academics maintain the stories and curiosities of life in old Ireland, there is a dedicated movement, comprised of pundits and former players that keep the story of Ulster strength alive.
Their problem is that the evidence suggests otherwise. Despite this, previews of the 2018 season feature Tyrone on the very short list of teams that can stop Dublin winning the Sam Maguire for a fourth time in a row. This is mainly because of the paucity of contenders beyond Mayo and Kerry, but those who see Tyrone as a team of that calibre have forgotten much in four months.
It was at the end of last August that the legend of Ulster football was sent crashing into the past. The achievements of Tyrone, Armagh and Donegal, and before them Down and Derry, can never be disputed, but they should not be recognised as factors this season.
Tyrone ripped through Ulster last summer, and thrashed Armagh by 18 points in the last eight. When they met Dublin, the football that was good enough to conquer the north was exposed as hopelessly out of date.
There was a time when a deeplying, clustered defence was capable of suppressing the best forward lines, and in Ulster, where the tactic was designed, it persisted.
It is a plan out of time, though. The fitness and football skills of Dublin mean they cracked the problem inside minutes of their semi-final starting.
How the leading Ulster teams of Tyrone, Monaghan and Donegal respond will be one of the more interesting features of this season, but until then there is no sensible reason for supposing Tyrone can challenge Dublin, or indeed Mayo and Kerry. Since the last of their three All-Ireland wins in 2008, they have played Dublin three times in the Championship and lost three times. They have played Kerry twice and lost twice, faced Mayo twice and lost twice.
Three Ulster sides reached the quarter-finals of the Championship last year. Monaghan lost to Dublin by 10 points. Armagh were destroyed by Tyrone, before the outstanding team in the province were torn asunder by Dublin.
That was the day the philosophy governing northern football was reduced to history, unfit for use in the modern game.
The Ulster Championship is a battle whose fierceness has no relevance beyond its own borders. For a county like Tyrone, who are supposed to be dreaming big September dreams, Dublin shape the world.
They are the measure and nobody else. What we can say with certainty on this first Sunday of the year is that Tyrone failed utterly when their plan and their players were set against the Dublin standard last August.
Losing to a marvellous team should bring no shame, but the manner of Tyrone’s defeat was shocking. They were, 12 months ago, figured to be Dublin’s pursuers, along with Kerry and Mayo.
While the latter are not good enough to beat Jim Gavin’s team, they have tested them like no other side. Kerry, if further back, have the players and the recent history with Dublin to justify their status as contenders.
There is nothing to support a case for Tyrone as All-Ireland hopefuls but history and the dense mythology of Ulster football.
Folktales won’t frighten the Dubs.