Local pride the spur as two tribes meet far from the spotlight

LEINSTER SFC FIRST ROUND: TOM HUMPHRIESsets the scene as two of Leinster's lightweights prepare to go toe-to-toe

ONE OF the ironies of the National Football League being what the GAA politely terms “the secondary competition” is that it often receives the compliment of a thoughtful launch, a game between two superpowers which shakes everybody from hibernation and provides a calculated bit of spectacle.

The championship by contrast is allowed slink into our consciousness like a wet dog coming home on a bad evening. The media, funny enough, does its best to muster a little drum roll for the bedraggled thing, running previews spiced by county by county analysis and soul-searching questions like, who would Mayo be if the county was a character from The Simpsons?

The GAA though is stubbornly resistant to summer flash. There’s a bit of championship if ye want it. Suit ye’erselves now.

The scheduling of early championship games is doggedly unappetising, the gaps in continuity for some teams are discouraging and the overall structures are unwieldy to begin with. How else do you explain Leinster’s two least successful football sides meeting in Portlaoise tomorrow to tussle over a bone, a collision neither hyped or much-anticipated?

You’d have to be a native and dyed in the wool at that to be considering making the journey.

Wicklow, without a single Leinster title in their history, rolling around in the Portlaoise dirt with Carlow whose single title came in 1944. Lordee, but every other Leinster county bar Kilkenny has won out in the province since 1944.

For the locals of course, Carlow and Wicklow is a local derby with a touch of sulphur about it. Exchanges across the border have always been surprisingly sharp for two sides at the lower end of the footballing food chain.

Carlow’s first taste of success was in 1905 when they took three attempts to beat Wicklow in the Leinster Junior semi-final to qualify for their first provincial final. Since then the days of pleasure for either county have been few and far between but they adhere to the bitter old peasant nostrum that it is better for your neighbour’s horse to die than to have two horses yourself.

Wicklow and Carlow. These sort of days funny enough are the kind that sustain the GAA and let it get away with as much as it does in terms of complacent thought.

They should be selling the game all week, one side should have had home advantage, the possibilities of being on the easy side of the draw in Leinster should have been inflated, memories of Wicklow’s crazy run through the play-offs last summer should have been dusted down.

Instead there is no GAA magazine or preview programme on the national airwaves at present. The coverage is slight tending toward non- existent.

The All-Ireland champions are in action down the road in Semple Stadium and there is a good faction-fight in prospect at Celtic Park. Wicklow and Carlow are afterthoughts who will go about their business in peace and privacy but they have enough between them to make sure that there will be some sort of gate in Portlaoise and most likely a decent game, possibly an upset.

It should be more. It should be bigger. Wicklow, in relation to their population, punch well below their weight class. Wicklow, with large urban areas like Bray (as big almost as Tralee and Killarney combined) Arklow and Greystones and good access to funding and the sporting infrastructure of the capital city, is a GAA black spot, an eternal and sorrowful mystery.

Carlow have a small population but decent minor teams of recent vintage in both hurling and football suggest a strong pulse in the games there. The Micko years in Wicklow have been encouraging but it is what structures Wicklow have in place when he moves on that will determine if it was all worth it.

As for now? It could all end in tears. The tug of love over Tommy Walsh has seen the big midfielder return to his roots in Carlow after three years with Wicklow. That those three years included historic Wicklow moments like the Tommy Murphy Cup win of 2007 and the 2008 defeat of Kildare made the matter all the more galling to Carlow who haven’t won a game since beating Wicklow in the 2006 championship.

Given the return of one prodigal it is a tribute to Mick O’Dwyer’s sorcery that as of yesterday Carlow should have been 3 to 1 outsiders against a Wicklow team with whom they laboured in Division Four. Given Brendan Murphy is also back in harness after his stint with Sydney Swans, those odds on a Carlow win are generous.

Like O’Dwyer, Luke Dempsey has a flair for the ambush win and Carlow are bringing through players from the minor side which reached the 2007 Leinster final. Paul McElligott is a serious defensive talent, Darragh Foley is very promising and for much of Carlow’s Leinster under-21 semi- final with Dublin, Murphy looked the best player on the field.

Murphy and Walsh impressed at midfield against Clare in a challenge game at last week. If Carlow get enough ball they could test Wicklow’s full-back line.

In 2006 Walsh played against James Stafford in the Wicklow midfield and then went on to play many games with him. Tomorrow Stafford is partnered by the energetic Jacko Dalton. These subplots inflate the importance of a game between two of the code’s unsung teams. There will be no romance in Portlaoise tomorrow and not much of a crowd. Pity because there is much that might be learned about the plenty that needs to be done.