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18th February 2016
04:58pm GMT
Given the quality of fare served up in the provincial championships in recent years, is it possible that we won’t see better games until the All-Ireland quarter-finals, the point at which many argue the Championship only comes alive?
We put it to a debate.
But don't turn around this summer and have the absolute affront to suggest that the game is dying because you see a team defending, or you see a player drag another man down, when you see a downright war of attrition from two outfits who just cannot accept losing.
Derry play Tyrone in the first round of the Ulster championship this year. It's going to be every bit as competitive and entertaining as the Tyrone-Donegal opener was last season. It's going to be every bit as hate-filled and robust as nearly all Ulster championship clashes are and will be again in 2016 from May to July.
Cork and Kerry produced one of the games of the decade in their drawn Munster final last year that almost broke the internet as well as the steel beams that were upholding the Fitzgerald Stadium stands.
It had everything. It had goals, it had fights, it had dubious decisions, it had end-to-end football and even had blanket defences at times (imagine). It had everything right up to the point that a corner back decided to throw a leg and his county's very last throw of the dice at a ball from way down the field with the top of his laces to rescue a draw. It had rivalry. And it had a second day out of equal drama.
Meath and Westmeath's Croke Park clash was fairytale stuff. Conor McManus' performance against Neil McGee and two other Donegal defenders in the Ulster final was one of the highlights of the summer and something that would've inspired young generations of footballers all over again.
Every single year, people are having digs at the big, bad inter-county beast for no other reason but for the fact that not all of the games are competitive - and then of course when a team defends to make it competitive, there are moans about that too.
But throughout the summer, we are constantly reminded of the beauty of football all over the country and we're constantly treated to spectacles that their only problem is that they are not for the faint-hearted.
Don't forget either, those club games were All-Ireland semi-finals. They were the equivalent of our two Dublin and Mayo clashes, our Mayo and Kerry clashes, Donegal and Dublin. Don't forget that they, too, had to weed through some non-events and dead rubbers to get to this point. Just like every single competition in every sport does.
But don't forget that there was some magic along the way. There always is.
Perhaps the most important thing about both games is that all four sides involved went all out to win the game as opposed to going out not to lose, an approach all too evident in the inter-county game nowadays.
Before I go on, I don’t mean to join the brigade of people who like to paint the All-Ireland football championships as an utterly joyless affair. I’m not Joe Brolly. Besides, the football championship has enough critics as it is.
Until the GAA gets its house in order and sorts out the provincial championships, however, then this year will probably be the same as every other year in recent memory and fail to light up until the All-Ireland series in August.
By that stage, the wheat will have been separated from the chaff, the heavyweights will duke it out at Croke Park and we’ll get to see what the Championship can be like when teams with similar levels of ability go head-to-head on a regular basis.
Of the provincial championships, only the Ulster Championship has come anywhere close to being competitive in recent years and even then, the most interesting contests in the north have had a sort of grim fascination about them as opposed to an aesthetic appeal.
That’s absolutely fine, by the way. There are many ways to skin a cat and Ulster’s way of doing so has been serving them well up there for a long time now.
But free-flowing contests like the ones on show on Saturday evening will likely be rare enough in the inter-county arena until the business end of the Championship and there’s been ample enough evidence to support that theory in the last few years.
The vast majority of the credit for the quality of Saturday night’s games as spectacles must go to the clubs themselves.
Despite what some would have you believe, the club game is far from innocent and wholesome, nor is it devoid of the cynicism and negativity that often flows through its inter-county equivalent.
If anything, it can often be worse. Club managers and club players will ape tactics they see at inter-county level and when you have negative tactics being implemented by a lower standard of playes then the spectacle can often be grim.
But the teams involved on Saturday night didn’t do that. They trusted themselves to play attacking football at a pace – particularly in the Castlebar v Crossmaglen game – that was relentless at times. And the end product was absolutely fantastic.
It would be nice to think that similar philosophies in style will be adopted by inter-county managers between now and September, but the grind of trying to ensure Allianz League survival and of trying to avoid hammerings from the bigger sides in a lopsided championship system renders that prospect unlikely.
If you haven’t seen them yet or even if you have, do yourself a favour and go back and watch both semi-finals from Saturday night.
They’re probably the best games you’re going to see for six months.
