The health of Leinster football

08 Jun 2010

Without an All-Ireland senior title since 1999, the Leinster football landscape is not flush with success. Christy O’Connor considers how it really measures up to the other provinces.

In his annual report to the Leinster Council Convention in February 2000, secretary Michael Delaney wrote of how the province could look forward with great confidence to the new decade. Based on the available evidence from a football perspective, it was a fair assessment. Meath were All-Ireland champions for the second time in four seasons, while Westmeath had won the All-Ireland U-21 football title for the first time.

A decade on though, and the Leinster football landscape is vastly different. No team from the province has won an All-Ireland senior title since 1999 - the first time since the 1930s that Leinster completed a decade without an All-Ireland title. Meanwhile at underage level, teams from the province have won just three All-Ireland titles in the meantime; Laois bagged the 2003 All-Ireland minor title while Dublin annexed two U-21 titles – 2003 and 2010.

Furthermore, no Leinster team has been to an All-Ireland senior final since 2001, when Meath were hammered by Galway in 2001. And the National League (Division 1) scene has been barren too. Offaly was the last Leinster county to win the Division 1 title in 1998, while Dublin will be the only eastern representatives in Division 1 again next season.

Dublin has conceded, on average, over 22 points per game when losing at the All-Ireland quarter-final and semi-final stage in each of the last five championships. And it's unlikely that Dublin would have been so dominant in Leinster if the standard elsewhere in the province was higher.

Elsewhere, Wexford, Wicklow, Westmeath, Laois, Louth and Kildare have all had flights of fancy fuelled by the qualifiers or the quarter-finals but no other county outside of Dublin looks like making it to September in the near future.

Leinster remains stagnant. Since the quarter-finals came into being nine seasons ago, 36 places have been claimed by sides coming through the qualifiers but Leinster has claimed just 11 of those places. Beyond the quarter-finals the story gets worse. One semi-final win in all that time.

The easy thing is to keep bashing Leinster football but has it really been that bad? Maybe Dublin are over hyped, but the state of Leinster football has been overplayed too. What’s certain is that Leinster football is in a much better state than it was in the middle of the decade, a time-warp too many commentators seem to be trapped in.

Connacht football had a wonderful spell circa 2001-2003, but Mayo in 2004 and 2006 has been the only Connacht side of the last nine years to reach the last four. In Munster, Cork and Kerry remain the only sides from the province to reach the All Ireland quarter-finals. Meanwhile in Ulster, Armagh and Tyrone are the only teams to reach All-Ireland semi-finals in the last five seasons.

The true gauge of a province isn't whether it boasts the All Ireland champions. The best measure of the health and strength of a province is that of their third and fourth teams. Last year, Meath made an All-Ireland semi-final while Kildare have made the last two All-Ireland quarter-finals. Wicklow have made huge progress in recent years under Mick O’Dwyer while Louth delivered a fantastic display last weekend to knock out Kildare with the best attacking performance so far in this championship. As for the Dubs, they have altered their game this year because they finally realised that you don't play shootout football against the likes of Kerry and Tyrone.

At the weekend, two big Leinster quarter-finals take place. Meath versus Laois and Dublin against Wexford. The bashing is sure to start all over again but maybe the critics should look elsewhere before they take out the bludgeons.

If you are looking forward to the 2010 Championship please take a moment to make a carbon saving pledge and play your part in making Croke Park carbon neutral.

Christy O'Connor has worked in the national newspaper industry for over ten years and now writes primarily for the Irish edition of The Sunday Times. A former member of the Clare senior hurling panel, he is the author of the critically acclaimed hurling book 'Last Man Standing'. He has also written 'The GAA Quiz Book 1' and the 'The GAA Quiz Book 2'.

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