They Also play each other in the league too. You could have a scenario where teams meet 4 times in a year between league and championship. It’s also very Single year in hurling where’s in football it’s usually a few years. If Meath, Kildare and cork got the finger out the football championship would be very interesting.
1 Like
Yeah the football championship must have been very interesting 20 years ago when Leinster was wide open with 5 or 6 contenders and there was no dominant force in the AI series. We need Dublin to drop back to the pack and the likes of Meath, Kildare, Cork, Armagh etc. to strive for where they’d have been around 2000.
This is the 2nd meeting in Connacht between Mayo and Roscommon since 2014. That meeting was last year alright but Roscommon won a cracker with a point in injury time before Kevin Mclaughlin bottled a free at the very end. There is no pleasing some people.
Bar Munster which is a hurling province, the rest of the country is football.
Dublin’s rise with their population size, infrastructure and Croke Park has been what has made football boring and non-competitive. If Dublin slip back counties will back themselves again and the competition will rise.
Kerry have a competitive advantage with the provincial structure as they have a road paved to the business end for them every year in a hurling province.
1 Like
In saying that when any two of Mayo, Kerry or Dublin meet there is a real sense of occasion. Even last year the first 35 minutes of mayo v Dublin was as good as it gets despite the gulf in class.
2 Likes
Limerick v Tipp starting on RTE News Now in an hour.
A golden era in Leinster anyway. 70,000+ at Leinster finals.
Hardly see the likes of it again any time soon
I was at that game and really enjoyed it.
The 10 minutes after half time was probably the most devastating football ever played by the Dubs.
Didn’t Shefflin hold a press conference?
Was there a couple of years every Dublin game was a near sell out? First rounds v Longford attracting 70k
Aye, something close to that. 60+. May have been a few double headers in there too, but not many. The GAA milked them for all they were worth.
Must have been a great crop of footballers in Laois when they had won Minors in 96’, 97’ and 03’. Reached a minor final in 98’ too? Westmeath were on the rise under Luke Dempsey. Meath and Kildare under top class management and even Wexford with a generational talent in Marty Forde were a real treat in the mid 00’s(reaching a division 1 final in 2005).
Won 3 in a row Minor Leinster’s around 05 too. Everything was on the up. 3 in a row Leinster final appearances from 03-05. Heady days. Shoulda beaten Mayo the year they had the mill at the hill. Shoulda gotten more out of it all But fucking it was a bit of Craic too. I’d take it again now.
Ye had a few good under 21 teams as well back in those days.
Lost dreadfully to Cork in an All Ireland U21 in Thurles around 06 I think. Injury time goal from Dan Goulding. Laois team featuring Healy, Quigley, O Loughlin, Kingston, Conway, Tierney, Timmons, McNulty. There was great hatred between them and Cork at the time.
With the underage credentials ye had during that period I think ye slightly underachieved in not reaching an AI semi-final, winning a second provincial title. I remember Wolly suggesting in an interview/podcast as recently as 2012 that if Jim McGuinness had take over Laois he could achieved just what he did with Donegal. Not sure how realistic it was at that stage though😂
Laois need to be ruled with an iron fist by an outsider to achieve, too bould to do otherwise. Jim might have, but most likely the soft cunts woulda have fucked off the panel rather than listen to him.
Definitely underachieved with what we had but overachieved to even bring through the players we did in such a glut. Then we took our eyes off the ball and the supply line dried.
That’s not a team that would strike fear into you.
1 Like
I remember following the game v Tyrone in 2006 on the wireless in France with a gang from Laois. Heady days