Damian STACK

WAS it a strong National League or not, and how does that bode for the quality of the upcoming Championship?

TO give a Kerry answer, it was and it wasn’t.

The final last Sunday was a proper belter, and seemed to tell us plenty about the state of both Derry and Dublin ahead of the championship. Potential strengths and weaknesses, areas to attack, weaknesses to be exploited.

At the same time, though, that final rather papered over the cracks of what had been a very disappointing competition. How many of Kerry’s seven games across the competition were you left satisfied by? How many of them were decent, full-blooded games?

The Derry game stands out for us. The Roscommon game wasn’t too bad either. The Dublin game was interesting in its own way, but the others? They had very little about them and that was replicated across the competition. In Division 1 at least.

The two promoted sides out of Division 2 look more than decent, while Division 3 and 4 are hard-fought, but no it wasn’t a strong league. Other than that Derry look like contenders now, we’re not sure it will make much of a difference to the championship.

Sunday’s final was remarkably open, will Dublin be as open when the big stuff kicks in? Unlikely you would have thought.

From Kerry’s perspective, do you think they have strengthened their panel sufficiently, and who is the one player who has impressed you the most and why?

KERRY started off really well in this regard with Dylan Geaney and Cillian Burke making very solid impressions. Their injuries, however, kind of robbed the Kingdom of a little momentum in that regard.

Had Burke got the second half of the National League to develop as well as the first, for instance, he’d be in a much better position to challenge for a starting berth and, really, Kerry do need a couple new starters this year to freshen the thing up.

Hopefully, those hamstring injuries to Geaney and Burke will have cleared up to before long and they can get back to pushing hard to nail down a starting berth.

Joe O’Connor is not technically a new player, but having missed last year and not featured too much in his original breakthrough season, this feels like a new start for the Austin Stacks man. He’s been up and down a bit, but was definitely growing into the role the longer the league wore on.

His Stacks’ colleague Armin Heinrich made a nice impression against Galway the other week, while Seán O’Brien is definitely an option on the half-back line. So, yeah, overall Kerry are in a better place after the league than before.

Are Dublin the hot favourite to retain their title, or can any team dethrone them? Who could that be?

YES, Dublin are the raging hot favourites to retain their title.

Dessie Farrell has done a really good job in the last couple of years renewing that panel, so much so that one is left with the impression that the Na Fianna man is in the early stages of building a new dynasty.

This is a county which has won nine of the last twelve All Irelands, Dublin winning is the default position. It will take them dropping off a bit – and they seem to be ramping back up – or a team really rising to meet them in order for them to be bested.

After Sunday, Derry are the obvious choice to dethrone them, the way they went at them, finding all that space and creating all those goal chances, but we suspect that Dublin will in the long run take plenty of learnings from that and come back stronger.

Derry won the game, but they still don’t look a side who know how to win big games if you get us, which leads us back to Kerry as the most obvious challenger, even if Derry look the better side at the moment.

What county looks like it could be a disruptor to the established sides?

JIM McGuinness (pictured) is the great disruptor and if anybody can come in, take a side that was fairly moribund, and make it a championship contender inside his first nine months in charge it’s him.

With a handful of players out through injury for Sunday’s Division 2 final – Ryan McHugh and Paddy McBrearty – they were slight underdogs for that game and still came out on top of a decent final with Armagh.

Armagh have been building for the last few years so we’re not sure if they count as disruptors, but they’re good enough to take a scalp or two along the way.

Having seen the new format for the first time last year, is the provincial / All-Ireland series too bloated with games, or are you excited for a feast of action between now and the end of July?

NOT hugely buzzing, no, if only because the championship is a bit of a slow-burn these days. The provincial championships are dead as the Dodo, and the All-Ireland group phase while worthy isn’t the most exciting.

So, yeah, it’s too bloated. It’s a hell of a lot of games to knock out not that many counties. If we could fast-forward to the last round of the group phase, and the preliminary quarter-final stage, we would quite honestly.

At least there’s the Munster hurling championship to keep us entertained until then.

What three players are you most looking forward to watching in the Championship, and who is likely to be named Footballer of the Year?

BRENDAN Rogers, ever since he broke through he’s just been electric. Brian Fenton is probably the best all-round footballer in the country. And, of course, David Clifford who can do things the rest of us can’t even imagine. Fenton for footballer of the year.

Four provincial champions, the All-Ireland finalists and who lifts Sam Maguire?

Kerry, Mayo, Donegal, Dublin Dublin to beat Kerry in the final