Early in the summer the All-Ireland football championship draw can sometimes seem like the fourth secret of Fatima.
However last weekend’s results have seen the dust settle and things take shape and it is good news for Kerry.
And very, very bad news for Mayo.
Since 2014 the SFC qualifier draw has been divided in two, the A and B sides. The aim was to reduce the frequency of matches for defeated provincial semi-finalists and finalists, but it has also taken away a degree of surprise from the backdoor route.
It also means that you can chart a county’s route and have a fair idea of who the four provincial champions will face at the quarter-final stage.
While the format of this summer’s semi-finals has long been established, with the Munster and Leinster champions on one side and the Connacht and Ulster provincial winners on the other, the lop-sided nature of the qualifiers has only just become clear.
Kerry, as Munster champions, and the winners of Sunday’s Connacht SFC final between Galway and Roscommon will play the two sides that emerge from the ‘A’ side of the draw.
The two sides that emerge from the ‘B’ side will face Dublin the Leinster champions and the winners of the Ulster final between Donegal and Tyrone.
To correspond with the Munster/Connacht, Leinster/Ulster division, Tipperary and the loser of Connacht SFC final will go into final round of A qualifiers, with Westmeath the Leinster runners-up and the losers of Tyrone-Donegal going into Round 4B.
The upshot of randomly assigning teams to the ‘A’ and ‘B’ sides of the draws has seen a very lopsided looking Championship, with the ‘B’ bracket stacked with at least three Division 1 sides, Cork, a menacing Fermanagh (who face Mayo on Saturday) and presumably a Westmeath side buoyed by a second successive run to the Leinster final.
In contrast, the ‘A’ side features only one Division 1 side for sure, just promoted Cavan (who will hope to bounce back from conceding five goals to Tyrone with a handy qualifier opener against Carlow). Roscommon may end up in qualifier round 4B if they lose to Galway on Sunday but, either way, it is a far weaker set of teams.
The full cost of Mayo’s Connacht SFC semi-final defeat can now be laid bare. If they overcome Fermanagh, they still face potential opponents as menacing as a Conor McManus-led Monaghan, a dangerous Cork and a highly-motivated, highly pissed-off Donegal or Tyrone.
Good luck with that.
Meanwhile Kerry and the yet-to-be-crowned Connacht champions are waiting to see who prevails in the tallest dwarf contest on the other side, with a demoralised Derry, leaky Cavan, far from vintage Meath and the losers of Roscommon-Galway the scariest looking options.
None of which look like great preparation for the Kingdom ahead of a likely All-Ireland semi-final meeting with Dublin.
