A big difference between league and championship is that the latter requires no context. Win an All-Ireland and it can be parsed and analysed all you like, but no team leaves Croke Park with Sam Maguire feeling that it was a hollow victory, or needing to wait and see what it all means – individual regrets aside.
Maybe the late Paddy Cullen in 1977, crestfallen in the dressingroom at conceding three goals in the thumping defeat of Armagh, felt conflicted but the collective mood wasn’t paying much attention to his introspection, and anyway, he ended the year as the All Star goalkeeper.
Reaction after league finals is, however, different. Dublin dominated the competition in the last decade. In 2013, manager Jim Gavin greeted their first title in 20 years in a manner that would become familiar in the years that followed: dampening down any unseemly ardour and immediately switching focus to the team’s next opponents.
“The biggest thing is that it endorses and reinforces the work that we are doing on the training field. It’s a bit of tin and I’m sure in five weeks’ time Carlow or Westmeath won’t care what Dublin have done.”
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Beneath the smooth surface of that particular bromide lies, however, a sunken truth. League campaigns are a temperature check. Both Jack O’Connor and Jim McGuinness had emphasised that their key priority had been to identify and integrate new talent.
The Kerry manager could reflect on that with some satisfaction, whereas his Donegal counterpart surely experienced the same state, intensified when he looked back at his team’s performance, given that he too had deepened his panel, as evidenced by fellow Glenties man Max Campbell, who had just debuted a fortnight earlier, being sprung into the final and scoring three points. But McGuinness also got a performance and won the title.
Context on Sunday was obvious and he was happy to discuss the contrast with last July’s All-Ireland.
Donegal’s challenge that day had effectively been stillborn. Within 12 seconds, Gavin White had left them flat-footed and teed up Dylan Geaney for a point. By the 20th minute, they were nine adrift and getting cleaned out on kickouts.
Everyone associated with the team, who was interviewed afterwards, stressed the importance of those first 20 minutes. There was general acceptance that the bad start had made the whole match irretrievable and a determination not to let it happen again.
This time, when the clock reached 20, they were leading by four, 0-8 to 1-1.
Their ball-winning was transformed from the meagre rations of last July, and at half-time on Sunday, their percentage from all restarts was 64 per cent. Add in another statistic that was flashed up on TG4’s coverage, showing a similar dominant share of possession, and it’s clear the extent to which Kerry were starved of ball, unable to win possession or to get it back.
The county’s blue-chip forwards had an off-day, but it wasn’t inaccuracy that killed them – their conversion rate wasn’t much different from their opponents’. It was that without the ball, they were unable to create chances.
When McGuinness was appointed for the second time three years ago next August, he was asked about the significant changes to the game since his previous tenure had ended in 2014.
“The move to possession football, although there was an element of that previously. Kickouts were always important for us – pushing up on kickouts and other teams pushing up on ours. Because of that, I think there’s been a regression in transitional football, and that was important to us and would still be important to me.”
That was, of course, pre-Football Review Committee, effectively a different era, and the importance of kickouts in these days of the 40m arc has rocketed. Donegal selector and former player Neil McGee said in a post-match interview at the weekend that football had become “a game of kickouts”.
Having been ruined in the All-Ireland final by the inability to harvest a functional share of restarts, Donegal went after them this time, utilising their big men, Jason McGee, Hugh McFadden, Michael Langan and at times Michael Murphy under the dropping ball.
It was a gratifying corrective to what happened last July but echoing Jim Gavin’s formulation, Donegal spoke of little other than Down, their Ulster opponents, who were also title winners at the weekend after an unexpectedly seat-of-the-pants win in the Division Three final over an unlucky Wexford.
Precedent for outright winners suggests that only Dublin (four in a six-year spell) and Kerry (five this century) seamlessly stitch together doubles, although since 2000, Tyrone and Cork have also managed to do so.
That may also be a reflection of how an uncompetitive provincial championship can assist the achievement by allowing a training reset after the league.
There is, though, a peculiar circle of Hell reserved for league winners, who are judged to have underachieved in the championship. There may be a mellow period of contentment but remember, this lasted all of a week for the 2023 winners, Mayo.
Seven days later, they were knocked on the head by Roscommon in Connacht. If the effort begins to falter, recrimination is rarely far behind.
Two years ago, the league title couldn’t even protect Mickey Harte’s management of Derry beyond the summer. Possession of the title becomes almost a reproach, a false dawn to be endlessly refracted through the winter to illuminate the failure of betrayed promise.
That is unlikely to be Donegal’s fate, although arguably, winning the All-Ireland would be the only acceptable affirmation of their new status.
That’s a daunting context.
