Look at this photo from the Leinster final last year.
Here we are, the provincial decider, the All-Ireland champions on display, and over half the stadium is lying empty.
Look at this photo from the Leinster semi-final last year.
James Dolan has probably never felt as much solitude in all his life.
Look at the round before that. For some reason, it was deemed that a Leinster quarter-final clash between Kildare and Wexford was worthy of Croke Park.
This is what you think of when you think of the Leinster championship, the bare seats and lonely echos of an uninterested 82,000-seater stadium.
Playing in headquarters so much – the place that’s supposed to be the final destination – has not only ruined the atmosphere of that provincial tournament but it has sullied the Croke Park effect. Going down the road to Dublin is not really a thing anymore if teams get to do it in their first game of the championship.
Yes, Dublin’s presence would ruin most provincial championships but if you thought of them going up north, you do feel that they’d find it tougher. That’s not exclusively because the standard is tougher, but just borne from the fact that they’d be trekking to these remote, tight grounds with crowds falling over the top of them and sidelines creeping up as surely as the shoulder charges from the other direction.
If Dublin were in the Ulster championship, they’d have to go to places like Ballybofey or Newry, Armagh or even Breffni Park. They’d have no final in the wide open spaces of Croker either – Clones is the most expansive it would get for them.
Ulster isn’t even all that good anymore. It’s still living off a reputation that remembers the days when Armagh, Derry and Down were proper forces – a time when six counties could genuinely win the thing.
It’s a far cry from that now but it’s still a proud competition and it isn’t done a disservice by throwing two teams out in front of 12,000 at Croke Park with people lounging over seats, lying with their feet up and spread out so much that no-one will even bother shouting onto the field.
In Ulster, there’s still a belief that anything is possible on any given Sunday. Croke Park doesn’t lend itself to that notion.
“The perception of Ulster and the perception of Leinster… then when you actually break it down, there’s not an awful lot between them,” Colm Parkinson said on The GAA Hour.
“It’s the fact that Ulster have three teams and Leinster have one but the three teams in Ulster are way below Leinster’s best.”
Cian Ward put it another way.
“If you swapped Dublin and took any of those three (Monaghan, Tyrone and Donegal) and put them into Leinster, the Leinster championship would be very competitive,” the Meath man said.
“If you swapped Dublin with Monaghan, Tyrone or Donegal, you’d have a seriously competitive Leinster championship and everybody in Leinster would think that they could win it.”
And, as it is, there are some genuinely appetising clashes in Leinster. They’ve just been ruined by Croke Park.
There’s hope this year for some of the fixtures but it won’t be long until players are playing with empty seats staring back at them.
Listen to the full debate on Ulster and Leinster below from 23:19.
