Who are the marquee Galway forwards?
A bent ref got that cork team past limerick that year and yes they got a soft final but worse than that was they didn’t kick the ball. The worst proponents of handpass football ever, they were the definition of puke football.
They have.
You basically haven’t address any of the points I have made but don’t let me get in the way of a good rant.
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Improving a point or two and weakening someone else a point or two sounds all very simple and achievable but the context of all those close games is Dublin have always done enough. Obviously they’ll be beaten at some stage and that might be sooner rather than later but in past years scoring 2 extra points just meant Dublin scored 2 more too. They weren’t kicking scores in a vacuum and hoping they’d tally up to be enough to beat their opponent.
In fairness there were a number of utterly abysmal footballers on that Cork team - Pearse O’Neill, Paudie Kissane, Nicholas Murphy, Cadogan etc.
And how could I forget Aidan Walsh.
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You’re right they were competitive over a few years but my point was they were the worst football team to look at to win a title I can ever remember and arguably the weakest team to win one in decades.
A very average side. Still hard to believe Down let them fall over the line. Even harder to believe Kerry got caught by Down. Cork hung around long enough until someone bate Kerry for them. They were lucky Dublin were still gathering themselves and Tyrone had gone missing. Just a nothing All Ireland all in all, but they all count.
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They have done enough or the ref did enough for them. But yes you make a good point that those improvements don’t happen in a vacuum. My general point is that Kerry very nearly had them and Donegal wouldn’t consider them out of reach either, so at a minimum that’s two teams that will fancy themselves to go down to the wire with Dublin.
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Down just got overpowered, they had a very small team - Hughes, Poland, Rafferty, McComiskey were all little guys.
A real shame they didn’t have Liam Doyle or Ambrose Rodgers available as they would have given Down that physical edge.
Aidan Walsh was far from an abysmal footballer.
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Down always beat Kerry
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Depends what you mean by footballer. He was a decent athletic/high ball fielding midfielder but he had little in terms of vision or technique when it came to kicking the ball.
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No they haven’t. They were beaten by Roscommon and Mayo last year. That’s not competitive.
You can be highly effective within the parameters of the sport without ever kicking the ball
He could barely kick the ball straight. But he was effective in what he could do. Not abysmal, but by no means a talented footballer.
Hardly abysmal though?
In recent years they’ve won a few Connacht titles, made a few semi finals and a final. By any measure that is competitive as it’s far ahead of what most of the field have achieved.