Dessie Dolan Sr used to pull his Leitrim players into a huddle whenever he heard them talking up Dublin or Kerry too much.
“Ye eat the same spuds as everyone else,” Dolan would tell them. It was a fair point and one that Gary Reynolds, last year’s Leitrim captain, came to realise when he began playing in Dublin with St Oliver Plunketts Eoghan Ruadh, the home of the Brogan brothers.
“I play my club football in Dublin and I feel that I’m every bit as good as anyone else,” Reynolds said. “We’re all made the same way, we play the same way.”
Yet there is one obvious difference between Leitrim and Kerry or, in the case of this evening’s lopsided Leinster championship quarter-final tie, Carlow and Dublin; they play a wildly disproportionate amount of championship games. While Carlow and Leitrim are typically gone from the championship by mid-July, at the latest, Kerry and Dublin are only beginning to stretch their legs.
The All-Ireland qualifiers were introduced in 2001 to address this issue and guaranteed all teams — bar New York — at least two games. Yet the impact of the qualifiers has been minimal for weaker counties.
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Look at Carlow, for example. In the 16 seasons with qualifiers, they have played just 40 games. Add in the 42 that Leitrim played in that period and it still doesn’t reach the 90 matches that Dublin have competed in throughout that period.
It equates to an average of 2.5 games each summer for Carlow since 2001 compared to 5.6 for Dublin.
Another way of looking at it is that Carlow typically lose their opening game in the Leinster Championship and, more often than not, their qualifier match too. Wicklow are in the same situation, playing 2.8 games each summer in that period, the same as Clare.
The back-door system is failing these counties who will plan each year for seven league games in winter conditions and just two championship matches on dry sod.
It’s why Carlow celebrated last month’s Leinster championship first-round win over Wexford almost as if it was an All-Ireland final success in September. If there’s a championship that exists within the championship, where weaker teams try to stem the tide of continual defeat, that was their All-Ireland win.
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Unfortunately for them, they are about to find out that the real All-Ireland champions, Dublin, have little time for sentiment or the plight of weaker counties. In all likelihood, Carlow will be beaten by the 20 points that the bookmakers predict and will return to the qualifiers with their senses a little scrambled. Depending on the draw, that could be the end of the road for them then.
It’s a depressing tale that exists not just in Leinster but in all four provinces. The imbalance between the amount of games being played by the haves and the have-nots in Munster is even more stark. Kerry have played a staggering 96 championship games since the qualifiers were brought in, making them the only team to have averaged six matches per summer. Waterford, meanwhile, have played just 34, averaging out at 2.1 games each campaign.
Tyrone, from Ulster, once played ten games in a single championship campaign, while winning the 2005 All-Ireland, and have averaged a healthy 5.75 games every summer.
Struggling counties like Carlow, aside from not playing enough games, are consistently having their hearts broken by shattering defeats, prompting many players to pack it in. In such an environment, developing players for championship football is next to impossible. The solution would appear to be more games but nobody can decide exactly how to deliver these in a meaningful way that is acceptable to everyone.
The players haven’t always helped themselves either. When the Gaelic Players Association drew up proposals for championship reform in 2015, they spoke to players from Division Four teams and suggested including some form of “B” championship in their blueprint. Weaker counties would play together at the same level and to progress that way.
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To a man, the players knocked it back, stating that the beauty of the present championship was that it allowed for the worst teams in Ireland to play against the best, for one day at least. That’s a legitimate argument, yet weaker counties are consistently losing players, with many concluding that it’s simply not worth the hassle.
Brendan Murphy is Carlow’s best player, a towering midfielder whose anticipated tussle with Brian Fenton of Dublin will be one of the game’s key battles, yet even he declined to play in 2014 and left for the US on the eve of the 2015 championship.
Colm Cooper, the recently retired Kerry great, paid Murphy the ultimate compliment after the win over Wexford when he said that the 28-year-old would make it with any county team in Ireland.
Maybe so, but he wouldn’t walk out on Dublin or Kerry a few weeks before the championship either.
Those counties are guaranteed long summers, but Carlow aren’t.