Gaelic Football has died. Again. And it is about to be resurrected. Again.
There are five games left in the football championship – at least – and, wait for this, each of them are going to be humdingers.
The bank holiday massacres that have left Croke Park an empty ruin this week will be but a distant memory come Saturday when the second half of the quarter finals reignite the championship in full-blooded, ding-dong fashion.
Tyrone and Monaghan, Donegal and Mayo, with Dublin and Kerry awaiting the victors in the semis. Alas, we have our elite six and there’s not one thing wrong with that.
We’ve been bricking ourselves at the lack of competitiveness thus far outside of the Ulster championship but it isn’t a strange thing to have some mismatches in early rounds of competitions.
Unsatisfying? Of course it is. A reason to push the panic button? Absolutely not.
This happens all over the world in every sport.
It happens in tennis. You might as well not bother with the first week of grand slams, they’re foregone conclusions really until we get the best players playing each other.
The Champions League? Who really cares until the latter rounds? And, even then, there are some dead rubbers.
The Rugby World Cup in September: do you really think that will be all fireworks? There’s going to some pointless clashes. Ireland will run up huge scores against the likes of Canada, Romania, Italy even.
If you wanted a truly competitive soccer World Cup, you might as well invite only six teams. At a push. Jesus, Brazil were beaten 7-1 in a World Cup semi final. There was no worldwide investigation or suggestions to overhaul the tournament.
It’s the nature of sport. Yes, we’d like for every game to go to the wire and, in a sense, Jim McGuinness is right when he questions whether counties are really doing enough to make themselves competitive in an era of excuses and giving up because their team isn’t on top.
And the answer the lazy are offering – looking for any excuse to get out of doing the actual work themselves – is to split the championship. We’ve already established that wouldn’t work. If there really are only four good teams, why would subdividing the thing into two pots of 16 make any difference?
But, suddenly, we’ve reached the business end. The proper end of the season, the climax of any tournament – like every tournament has – and now it is worth it.
You don’t stop watching Wimbledon before the semi finals start. You start enjoying Wimbledon when the semi finals start.
And it seems bizarre that the GAA has been all but written off – for about the seventh time this year – just when things are really about to explode.
For the two remaining quarter finals, the semis and the final, we have teams evenly matched. We have the most competitive teams on the island and we have teams with winning experience looking to win some more.
The worry would’ve been if there was only one team streets ahead of the rest and the entire season was just a procession like the Scottish Premier League. But we learned to shut our mouths last year when Dublin were caught on the hop in August.
Yet some have thrown their hands up in the air already before we get to actually sit back and witness how Conor McManus can once again exploit a modern blanket defence with traditional class and a complete lack of concern for the men hanging off of him.
Donegal are facing off with Mayo. The same side that hammered them in 2013. The same side they beat in the final the year before. Once again, revenge is on the agenda for two sides that at least one of has featured in every decider in the last three seasons.
Then Kerry and Dublin, the two most guilty perpetrators of having the audacity to go out and run up a big score against a team, will be given either an acid Ulster test in the semis or a daunting face-off with the west’s finest.
What’s wrong that we’ve had to wait until now to see the real action? What’s wrong with that?
In saying that though, was the first Munster final not celebrated as one of the greatest games in a long time? Was Monaghan’s one-point master class over Donegal not hailed as nail-biting and exciting?
Even if they weren’t, why should we be panicking so?
We have six teams left that are going to do nothing else but battle to the death. We have the six best teams in the country left. We have six teams with genuine aspirations of winning the whole thing all still in the competition.
What other sport can say that?
We’ve written off this story before we even should’ve started reading it.
There’s no-one left here that shouldn’t be now. There’s only giant clashes ahead.
There’s only going to be fireworks from here on in. Sit back and enjoy this game.
For once.
