Here’s to the football championship , the great clanking rust bucket of the Irish sporting summerIn the mellow comedown from last weekend’s league final, nobody is taxing their brain too extensively in the search for contenders.– and if it isn’t, we must all hope for the public’s discretion in ignoring the tonnage of pre-championship babble that countenanced no other outcome.
Then again, maybe that’s where the cast-iron argument for our trio starts to show a little rust. As in, if we have three outstanding contenders for the All-Ireland, doesn’t that suggest that maybe we don’t actually have any? One team can be a distance clear of the peloton,There are bound to be a few teams in Ulster, for a start, who are looking at Derry and seeing them as a bridge to the other two rather than a dot off in the distance.
The reality is that nobody is going to know until they know. At this remove, there are just so many imponderables. Certainly, anybody getting overly dogmatic on the back of the league probably needs to go for a walk around the block and think again. So many teams were hobbled by so many missing faces for so many games that their relevance to what’s about to happen must be in question.
What is clear is that for the top counties, the serious stuff doesn’t properly arise until the last round of the All-Ireland series group stages on the weekend of June 15th/16th. If there was one lesson from the first year of the new structure, it’s you can tread water away until then. As long as the provincial runners-up are in the Sam Maguire, it’s going to be harder for the top 12 or so teams to leave the competition than to stay in it.
Underneath the big show, the Tailteann Cup is maturing into a serious competition. A proper, substantial fixture in the calendar. In two iterations so far, it has delivered eight different teams to the semi-final stage in Croke Park. Every player and manager you talk to down the divisions views it as a key part of their development. It could probably do with a Division Four team making a run at it, just to show it’s not entirely the preserve of Division Two teams slumming it for a year.
Most of all – and this isn’t so much an idle wish as a desperate personal request – that somebody in Croke Park changes the lamentable, maudlin balladry that follows every full-time whistle. They didn’t even play The Hills of Donegal last Sunday after the Division Two final, opting instead for Mary of Dungloe. Jesus wept.
Football Championship Contenders Predictions Forwards Managers
Ireland Latest News, Ireland Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: The42_ie - 🏆 5. / 86 Read more »
Source: IrishMirror - 🏆 4. / 98 Read more »
Source: IrishMirror - 🏆 4. / 98 Read more »
Source: IrishTimes - 🏆 3. / 98 Read more »
Source: JOEdotie - 🏆 31. / 51 Read more »
Source: IrishMirror - 🏆 4. / 98 Read more »