Dublin’s football league hat-trick no guarantee of All-Ireland success

Dublin’s achievement in recording a first three-in-a-row football league title sequence has left them very short odds for this year’s All-Ireland but the same happened last year after a similarly crushing win in the final against Derry.

To win three consecutive leagues leaves an historical mark, as the triple win has only been managed by three other counties – Mayo, Kerry and Cork. Mayo's sequence is the most extensive, as the county won six in successive years in the 1930s, 1934-'39.

Kerry followed with four in a row between 1971 and '74 and this decade it has become the norm with Cork winning the first three, 2010-'12, and Dublin taking the next three.

Less encouragingly from the Dublin perspective is the outcome to the championships in those years. Precedent suggests counties with multiple league wins do no better than win one All-Ireland along the way and Jim Gavin’s team have already done that, two years ago.

Mayo won a first All-Ireland in 1936 and Cork added their most recent in 2010 but surprisingly the pre-Mick O’Dywer Kerry, who won four successive leagues in the early 1970s didn’t add even one Sam Maguire – the county won All-Irelands the year before and the year after their league sequence.

Double

There is even less comfort for the weekend’s defeated finalists, Cork. Although Dublin four years ago followed league final defeat with All-Ireland success that particular double is not common. All told the league-All-Ireland double has been achieved on 22 occasions but in only eight years did the league runners-up go on to lift the All-Ireland. In 2001, Galway emulated the feat in what was the first year of the qualifier format.

Five of the previous six times this happened – Kerry (1980), Dublin (1977), Galway (1965), Mayo (1951) and Kildare (1928) – the All-Ireland winners, who lost that year’s league final, were defending champions and so their league final loss came in between back-to-back All-Irelands. The other county was Cavan in 1933, the year of their first All-Ireland.

Although the attendance of 31,548 at the Division One and Division Two finals looked meagre in an 82,300-capacity stadium and was the second lowest in five years, it was the fifth highest of the last 20 years.

The highest and lowest attendances of that period came in successive years with the 2006 crowd of 7,598 at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick for Kerry-Galway coming a year after 46,445 had attended Armagh v Wexford.

The biggest crowds to attend a league final were the record numbers at Dublin v Donegal and its replay in 1993, 51,179 and 59,703. In ’64, Dublin beat Down before 70,126 in Croke Park.