For a phenomenon we keep being told is a dead duck, the provincial football championships have done some amount of quacking in recent years. If Louth winning Leinster last year didn’t already buy them a few years’ grace, the scene in Roscommon on Sunday surely sealed the deal. You can bet your boots Clones will see something similar on Sunday, regardless of whether it’s Armagh or Monaghan celebrating.
Since the start of this decade, we’ve had Tipperary end a drought of 85 years, Cavan win their first for 23, Derry close off a 24-year gap and Louth win their first Leinster in 68 summers. We’ve had Dublin and Kerry both beaten out of the blue, we’ve had Donegal go from also-rans to supreme beings and back again. Westmeath probably won’t beat the Dubs this weekend but a hiding isn’t the certainty it was until recently.
Beating the shower from over the road still means something. The past few weeks have seen riotous underdog victories by Leitrim, Roscommon (twice), Monaghan, Down and Westmeath (twice). We’ve had games on a knife-edge in extra-time, hooter drama to beat the band, the whole shebang. Not bad for competitions we keep being told are on borrowed time.
Over the past week, the annual chorus of hand-wringing over the status of the provincials reached its crescendo. The staging of the draw for the All-Ireland series early in the week of the Munster and Connacht finals was just another sign of institutionalised disrespect. Tell me you don’t give two hoots about the provincial championships without telling me you don’t give two hoots.
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And yet, the appetite on the ground tells a different story. The crowd in Killarney on Sunday was 32,961, the biggest at a football match in Munster since 2015. Indeed, there have only been four times since the turn of the century when the Munster final has attracted a bigger attendance. At a time when Kerry have won 15 out of the last 16 titles, that’s a monstrous turnout.
The Hyde was full to capacity too, with a shade over 22,000 packed in. There isn’t a ticket to be got for the Ulster final. Croke Park will feel plenty roomy on Sunday by comparison but coming on the back of 65,786 through the gates last year, even the long-forsaken Leinster final feels like it is getting its legs under it again.
And look, nobody is pretending that this stuff is the be-all and end-all. It didn’t take a lot of effort for Pádraic Joyce to be circumspect in defeat on Sunday. He knows his team came out on the wrong side of a classic and there’s no shame in that. It’s not a stretch to posit that players might still be involved after the Rossies have broken up for the summer. Serious business awaits and Galway will have their say in it.
But history doesn’t evaporate just because you come up with yet another twist on the championship structure. Roscommon won the Connacht title by beating both Mayo and Galway. That just doesn’t happen very often. They did it in 2019 and in 2001 but before that, you have to go back to the Rossies of all Rossies – the late 1970s and early 1980s teams who did it four years on the spin. Otherwise, you’re only talking about a handful of times in 125 years the competition.
Westmeath have been in just five Leinster finals in their history. They’ve only ever been Leinster champions once and haven’t beaten Dublin in 22 years. Their year will not end with an All-Ireland but they took a wrecking ball to Meath just when their snooty neighbours were getting notions about themselves again. That matters. That will always matter.
In Clones this weekend, Armagh are looking to take a hatchet to the most glaring anomaly in football. Despite winning their All-Ireland, they’ve somehow gone 18 years without an Ulster title. Considering they were coming off a streak of seven titles in 10 years in 2008, it’s wild that they’re still waiting on their next one in 2026. But if they don’t beat Monaghan on Sunday, they’ll be the first team since Cavan 115 years ago to lose four Ulster finals in a row.
When we talk about doing away with the provincials, it all sounds reasonably logical and sensible in the abstract. But if you were in Killarney or Roscommon over the weekend, or if you’re in and around Clones or Drumcondra this Sunday, you won’t be able to escape the extent to which people feel this stuff in their bones.
The basics of the GAA aren’t big or clever – you want to sew it into the hoors who habitually want to sew it into you. By accident or design, we’re in a sweet spot this year of the provincial championships mattering more in the moment than normal, even as they’ve been denuded of their relevance to the All-Ireland competition.
If that doesn’t tell a story about the innate, organic power they hold, nothing will.
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