If the GAA was hoping the Super 8s would serve as a panacea to intercounty football’s ills, then it misread the diagnosis, with Saturday’s depressingly predictable results at Croke Park proving that while there is a definite elite in Gaelic football, it doesn’t consist of eight teams.
Instead there are three and, if fresh life can be breathed into Mayo, four teams who are way ahead of the rest, which has more or less been the case since 2013, the first season of Jim Gavin and Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s reigns. In that time, Dublin, Kerry, Tyrone and Mayo have filled 17 of the 20 semi-final slots available; Donegal interrupting their private party in 2014, Tipperary proving to be last year’s gatecrashers.
“The smaller counties with less resources would lead to more fellas carrying injuries
And should Roscommon defeat Mayo in today’s quarter-final replay then they will become the seventh county to reach the last four over the course of the past five seasons, suggesting that, to all intents and purposes, upsets still occur.
And it’s true. They do. Mayo have twice lost to Galway in the Connacht Championship over the last two years, and were held to a draw by Roscommon last Sunday, while the teething troubles this young Tyrone team suffered during the early years of their development were exposed by Donegal and Monaghan in Ulster, as well as by Armagh in the qualifiers. Dublin, too, lost to Donegal in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final.
Yet otherwise the top four have been dominant, Dublin winning their last five quarter-finals by an average of nine points, Kerry by an average of 12. Last week’s draw aside, Mayo have won every quarter-final they have played since 2010, while Tyrone have won three of their last four games at this stage of the competition. The one time they lost a quarter-final, Mayo were their conquerors.
Advertisement
Worse again, the margin of victories in the 20 quarter-finals played since 2013 (only six of those games have been decided by fewer than five points) has once again exposed the gulf in class.
How fab four have dominated football landscape since 2013
In keeping with recent trends, Dublin beat Monaghan by ten points on Saturday while Tyrone had 18 points to spare on Armagh, all of which suggests the Super 8s will accentuate the division between the haves and the have-nots.
“If I’m speaking honestly, I definitely think that will happen,” Malachy O’Rourke, the Monaghan manager, said after Saturday’s defeat. “If you’re like us, one of the smaller counties with less resources, playing tough games in successive weeks would lead to more fellas carrying injuries and suspensions into the second and third matches of this new format.
“The stronger counties don’t rely on a few individuals as much because they have stronger panels. Maybe I will be proved wrong, but I don’t think I will be.”
He shouldn’t doubt his instinct because on Saturday he faced a Dublin team who have lost just once in championship football under Gavin’s stewardship. After dominating the first half, effectively ending Monaghan’s chances of victory by the break, Gavin then emptied his bench, introducing Bernard Brogan and Michael Darragh MacAuley, two former footballers of the year, Paul Flynn, a four-times All-Star and Eoghan O’Gara, a three-times All-Ireland winner.
Advertisement
Notably, Kevin McManamon, scorer of so many game-changing goals in this Dublin journey, wasn’t used at all and that’s before we mention the imminent return of Diarmuid Connolly from suspension, or Cormac Costello, the match-winner in last year’s All-Ireland replay, from injury.
“Everything about Dublin is impressive,” O’Rourke said. “Physically, they are just so very strong and quick. Then you have to take into account the fact their range of skills are good but the big thing is they make the right decisions with the ball time after time. And the higher up the levels you go, the more critical decision making becomes.
“We expect a lot more of ourselves and it is difficult to keep coming back
“Coming into this game, we knew we had to play a lot better than we had done all year to give ourselves a chance and in this respect it is just so disappointing to leave here with that scoreline because we felt it was within us to do well, felt we had a chance, but we never really challenged at all. In actual fact, we had a lot of possession but our execution, and some of our decisions, was off. We gave the ball away too much.
“We hadn’t done ourselves justice before [at Croke Park on All-Ireland quarter-final days] but we knew Dublin were the toughest team we could possibly play. We expect a lot more of ourselves and it is difficult to keep coming back. That’s four quarter-finals we have lost now — twice to Tyrone, twice to Dublin. It’s not as if we’re losing to weaker teams. We’re losing to good ones.”
And that’s just the point. The new Super 8s format won’t help their cause. If anything it’ll make life even more miserable for them.
Advertisement
In the meantime, after a summer spent going through the motions, there is this thing called the All-Ireland football championship about to start. Every game from here on in will be evenly matched and only those with a prejudiced view of the world, or their own county, could predict with any certainty what will happen, and O’Rourke, for one, isn’t convinced Dublin will sweep Tyrone aside. “You have to remember that Tyrone have been here before, have done well in the recent past and have three All-Irelands to their name over the course of the last 14 years,” he said. “That breeds confidence because Croke Park is a tough environment when you are not used to it.”
The only thing Monaghan have got used to here is losing. At least they have company, though. In the same time frame that they have lost their four quarter-finals, Galway have been beaten in three, Cork and Armagh in two, while Cavan, Kildare and Fermanagh have also come and gone without a win.