Division 1 promises quality but few surprises this year

SUCH is the stranglehold the Dubs have over the football landscape at present that there’s not quite the same level of anticipation for the new season as we’ve become accustomed to.

How can there be when you pretty much know how the competition is going to play out before it even gets underway? Dublin are so strong and have such depth that even relatively experimental selections are invariably too strong for everybody else (who too will be conducting their own experiments).

Dublin will be in the final and Dublin will probably win it too. That’s just the way things are.

Bit by bit the Sky Blue machine is draining football of its life and vitality. We hasten to add that’s absolutely not their problem and we hasten to add that they’re doing absolutely nothing wrong.

They’re a brilliant, skillful and at times luminescent side, but they’re so far ahead right now that it sometimes feels like an exercise in futility hoping that somebody can rise to challenge them.

Last year it felt as though the gap was widening more than ever before. There didn’t seem to be much hope that somebody would be in a position to challenge them this year. Again not Dublin’s problem, it’s incumbent upon every one else to rise to the challenge.

The next two months should give us some indication whether or not they have or whether or not they can. Probably not we suspect right now, but hope springs eternal (just about!).

Viewed from this vantage point the only surprising looking thing about the competitive order is how stable it looks right now. The big six before the league – Dublin, Galway, Tyrone, Kerry, Monaghan, Mayo – are likely to be the big six after the league concludes.

The two promoted sides will probably struggle leaving us with a series of games that are likely to be of high quality, but short on surprises in the overall sense. Somebody will face Dublin in the final – teams might even trottle off towards the end of the league to avoid them if they’re already safe – and they might even beat them, but after 2017 people will have to react rather cautiously to even that.