GULF IN CLASS..Armagh v Wicklow wasn’t much of a contest
THE RESULTS of the championship so far tell one true tale – that the league doesn’t lie. Yes, that poor old uncle in the corner, forgotten, given no love, and hardly even noticed once the bee strikes the window, is more of an expert than we think.
This is why teams who ignore the league do so at their peril. Last year, the Dublin hurlers learned that to their cost – in 2011 they were League champions, but didn’t kick on in the championship, so they decided to respond to this progress by ignoring it last year and concentrating on the championship. Relegation followed and they were headed for the championship exit door before even the hay was even saved round Finglas.
The era of ignoring the league unless you’re All-Ireland champions is perhaps over, and even All Ireland winners are not safe from relegation if they decide to have an extended break, but the real conundrum for managers remains in finding a formula which can get you a good run without showing your hand while blooding a few rookies for official unveiling later on. It’s a hard one to pull off.
Division two is a killer in that teams there think they are better than they are and all of them want out of it, so every game is a knock out because to gain promotion, you need almost full points. Relegation and an early exit from the championship almost guarantees a managerial exit, so there’s a lot of balls to juggle here for those in charge of teams and the real talent is in keeping up while trying out.
Division 3 is the real purgatory, especially when you check out the teams which resided here recently – Monaghan, Meath, Cavan, Fermanagh; big beasts all of them. They all reckon they could and should be in a better place and very few fans are happy in that part of the basement. And Division 4 essentially contains the hurling counties who are happy enough to see their footballers suffer the ignominy of the bottom tier as punishment for abandoning the true Gaelic sport.
In hurling, weaker counties have accepted their fate long ago and a four tier championship exists which has been given enough time to bed in and become prestigious for counties to win. This week the Down hurlers were wined and dined in Stormont as reward (or punishment!) for their Christy Ring heroics and within that level of hurling, this is a fantastic achievement and a nice stopping off point before they regroup and go at it again.
For the weaker hurling counties, there is a plateau and they know it, so it would be totally unrealistic in the near future for Down to contest the Liam MacCarthy, regardless of how many times they win Christy Ring. But the thing is; the lesser hurling counties know their limits and remain within them, competitive, realistic and relevant and within all of this contains the momentum and motivation to keep at it for another campaign.
But in football, there is still the starry eyed notion that one day Wicklow or Waterford will win the Sam Maguire, so despite the best efforts of those who would try and take them aside and whisper into their ear that not if they were trying for eternity would they ever win an All-Ireland, out they trot every summer.
And each year they get a hiding. This year the slaughter was particularly exquisite. Limerick hammered by 18 points by Cork, then we had Waterford on the wrong side of a 26 point drubbing by Kerry, Carlow getting an 11 point beating by Westmeath who were then handed a 16 point mauling by Dublin. The qualifiers are as bad with Tyrone and Armagh last weekend having a combined 45 point cushion over Offaly and Wicklow and we ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait for London v Mayo, Meath v Cork and even Monaghan mightn’t be safe from Donegal. Only Cork and Kerry are on a par, but this pair have well exceeded their quota of double figure victories for one year.
Is there an answer? Probably not. You can take each county and see recent signs of improvement.
Tipp won the minor championship a couple of years ago and under their Michael Hogan initiative, they are promoting football to a higher priority in the county, Wicklow will look to the excitement of the Micko years as evidence that with the right man, a good back room team and a few euro, results can come.
Limerick’s fate seems to be tied up in the hands of whichever code the top players choose to play in a given year. They got promoted this year and have a few decent young footballers who will prosper in the higher division now that they have been promoted. Waterford make no effort at football, Leitrim’s entire population could fit into a corner of Tallaght and Carlow are just not very good for some reason, though they are better at hurling.
But the hammerings haven’t been confined to the minnows either. Laois got a trimming by Louth who mightn’t be seen as great shakes, Kildare with all their resources and ambitions were annihilated by Dublin and Galway got beaten out the gate by Mayo in a 17 point drubbing. All of this points to the simple fact that in recent years, the best have just got better and the worst have got worser. Apologies to my English teacher.
And there’s very little the rest of us can do about it.
Ulster teams have luckily been spared these hidings for a number of reasons. None of us are in division four and the blanket defence which we have all now become experts in has saved the goals from the normal onslaught that favourites give underdogs. This is perhaps the one good thing about the current way we play football up here. Only seven goals have been scored in the Ulster championship this year, but once the shackles had been taken off, Armagh had two past Wicklow before five minutes had elapsed on Sunday.
Our provincial championship is also the closest and most fiercely contested, though Donegal will unleash a ferocity of shock and awe rarely before witnessed on a Monaghan team which yearns to play football but so has been thwarted from doing so by the teams they have met so far. And this isn’t going to change soon.
So the moral of the story is. Any team can get hammered, but the lower down the league you are, the bigger the hiding. So the best approach is to learn lessons in the league and give lessons in the championship. Simple as that.
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