In the five years between 1987 and 1991 Meath reached four All-Ireland finals, winning two of them. Cork enjoyed an identical record over the same period.
Perhaps it was the Leinster-Munster symmetry that stopped people short of fretting about two new superpowers wrecking the game of Gaelic football.
Or maybe it was simply the fact they were not Kerry and Dublin.
Dublin or Kerry appeared in 18 of 20 All-Ireland finals – Kerry alone were in 14 – between 1968 and 1987.
When far fewer matches were televised an entire generation grew up watching Kerry and Dublin on the third Sunday of almost every September. And which two teams dominate the conversations of that now older generation when they discuss the greatest teams of all time?
Not the Cork and Meath teams of the late Eighties, anyway.
As much as sports fans like to admire past dominance in their rearview mirror, facing up to its realities in the present is far less palatable.
Jim Gavin’s Dublin have not even managed to emulate those Cork and Meath teams by securing back-to-back All-Irelands and already they are being mentioned in the same breath as the monsters that were Mick O’Dwyer’s Kingdom or Kevin Heffernan’s Dublin.
The 11-point win over Dublin was impressive on Sunday, not least in that it brought up the first league four in a row since Kerry managed the feat in the early Seventies.
Unbeaten in 22 Allianz League and Championship matches, they are chasing a sixth Leinster Championship on the spin. Having made light of the loss of key defenders Jack McCaffrey and Rory O’Carroll Dublin are 11/10 favourites to become the first team to defend Sam Maguire since Kerry in 2006-07.
Their age profile, their appetite for more glory and the size of their panel all points to a team that can create a legacy to stand alongside the perma-winning Dublin and Kerry sides of the Seventies and Eighties but they are not there yet.
However they are being spoken about as some sort of footballing junta, who have shut down all opposing voices and reduced the sport to some grim and predictable procession across the scorched earth of a non-competitive summer.
Well, Donegal softened their cough in 2014, two years after Mayo would also beat the Dubs in the All-Ireland semi-final before going on to lose the decider.
They are comfortably the most impressive team in the country at the moment but Trevor Giles’ doomsaying does seem a little premature. Three All-Irelands in five years is pretty good, but Kerry managed as many in four years towards the end of the last decade, around the same time Tyrone were winning them at an average of one every two years.
“I think Dublin have just become dominant and I think they’re going to stay that way for a few years to come which, for a neutral, isn’t ideal. If Dublin are playing somebody, are you going to watch it? Because it’s going to be one-sided,” said Giles.
“I think a lot of the games Dublin will be involved in, you could say, ‘they’re going to win this game, it’s not going to be a contest’. So it’s great for Dublin but it’s probably a bit of a problem for the game and for people trying to promote it.
“How are you going to make it exciting or interesting?”
Three counties other than Dublin – Cork, Kerry and Donegal – have already won All-Irelands this decade. That makes it as democratic as the Noughties and the Seventies already, even if it does fall a long way short of the bonkers Nineties, when eight counties shared 10 All-Irelands (only Meath and Down won more than one).
COMMENT: Éamonn Fitzmaurice is still playing four men he used to play with – it's time for Kerry to move on https://t.co/hrQiGCdSix
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 26, 2016
So, counties have been challenging Dublin’s hegemony and succeeding every second year. It makes things a lot more competitive than they are in hurling (six champions in 20 years).
Clearly the onus is not on Dublin to “make it exciting or interesting” but rather their opponents. Kerry had a remarkably productive spring right up until they ran into Dublin on Sunday, even if the 11-point result suggests a trimming that did not quite come to pass.
Still, Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s team looked their age and may struggle to prove themselves ahead of a likely All-Ireland semi-final meeting with Dublin – if they are crowned Munster champions.
Galway and Roscommon are making noises like they can challenge Mayo’s Connacht hegemony, while in Ulster Tyrone look the best of a typically competitive lot – even if the gap between the best ion the province and Dublin appears to be stretching.
Leinster… The best thing you can say about the Leinster championship is that it prepares Dublin so badly for the All-Ireland series that the likes of Donegal and Mayo can catch them on the hop.
Anyone bored by Dublin’s dominance lacks an appreciation for brilliant football. It’s not their fault the rest are not up to scratch.
In a generation we’ll all be telling our kids how we saw them play. Most of us will even leave out the bit about being bored.
