Champions' strong case for defence

We were waiting a long time after 1996 for the second boot to fall off the bed. Meath's follow-up All-Ireland had been on the cards since the current generation won its first four years ago. With a little more luck - between injuries and suspensions - it could have been their fourth-in-a-row.

Now with the Bank of Ireland football championship coming to life, Meath are shaping up as the most likely candidates for 10 years to retain their crown. Unless there is a surprise team lurking somewhere - if so, where? - any pretenders to Meath's crown stand already revealed.

There are a number of sides who will notionally entertain hopes of dethroning the champions, but realistically the options come down to the other provincial winners according to the unusually strong consensus: Kerry, Galway and Derry. Which is good news for Sean Boylan because it's nearly 10 years since Meath lost a championship match to a county from outside of Leinster - Down in the 1991 All-Ireland final.

Meath's challengers within the province don't look particularly menacing. Of the sides which have defeated them over the last decade, Offaly and Kildare are in decline whereas Dublin and Laois's rebuilding isn't sufficiently advanced.

If the consensus is correct, August's semi-finals will be intriguing if not necessarily enthralling. Meath and Derry are similar teams and so are Kerry and Galway. Well organised teams don't like the anarchy of facing forward-driven opponents. Last year Armagh made the fatal mistake of colluding in the creation of gridlock around the middle of Croke Park instead of pushing their forwards up.

Meath's most stunning defeats have come against teams with forwards in exceptional form. You can argue with the relative strength of the Meath selections, but for significant periods, Down in '91, Dublin in '95 and Offaly in '97 all tore them apart. Keeping a game tight and edgy is a good way of ensuring a team loses to Meath.

Cork's strength last year was in defence and Owen Sexton did the best marking job of the season on Trevor Giles, but a switch to the wing and Giles finished the match in the last 15 minutes. No team can hope to hold indefinitely the triangular threat of Giles, Graham Geraghty and Ollie Murphy.

Even allowing for the false nature of the context, Meath and Derry's probings at each other in the league final illustrate accurately how they would cope with each other. Kerry and Galway have somewhat suspect defences, but forwards who on form can open up any defence. The clash of styles in both semi-finals would be vivid.

It might also go some way to redeeming football after last year's generally dreary championship. It might seem unfair to teams whose specialities are defence and organisation, but it's always sides with good forwards trying to stay ahead of defensive shortcomings which catch the imagination.

Last year was a bad year for such teams and one of the consequences was that the All-Ireland was decided amongst teams which were solid at the back or, as mentioned in the case of Armagh, sacrificed themselves on the altar of solidity.

This may well be the last championship under the traditional structures. Although the FDC proposals were shot down last month, a compromise with the traditional power-brokers in the provincial councils will be salvaged some time in October. This should introduce some dilution of the preposterous knock-out format which is making a nonsense of teams' preparations and the potential presented by the best ground conditions of the year.

Already we have lost three - effectively four - teams before the league is over. This was a particular shame in the case of Waterford where such strides have been made over the past year or so to improve the lot of football in the county.

Leinster's round-robin preliminaries have varied life a little, but until there's some sort of parity in relation to championship seasons and guaranteed programmes, the Waterfords of the world are being ripped off by the structures.