Malachy Clerkin: Calling the football championship wide open is a polite way of saying every team is flawed
And so we get down to business. A
football championship
that has already provided more watchable games in a couple of months than in the previous two years combined will now shift gear.
For all the good vibes around football in 2025, winning and losing were kind of abstract concepts up to this point, consequences a sort of far-off threat/promise. Not any more.
From here on out, you either do the thing or you spend the next seven months annoyed that you did not do the thing. Of the 16 teams lining out this weekend, only
Armagh
have nothing immediate to play for. Win, lose or draw, they will top Group 4 and are guaranteed an All-Ireland quarter-final place. But even at that, knocking
Galway
out would be a delicious way to round off the group stage.
Regular as clockwork, the moaning has begun. You know it, you hear it, you can feel it in the air. 'Why?' trill the voices. Why are we ditching this format to bring in yet another one next year? Typical GAA, getting rid of something just when it starts to get good.
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To which the only sane response is, Jesus effing wept! Are people's memories really this short? Have they genuinely forgotten the reasons this stuff is changing? We surely can't be that easily distracted. Can we?
Maybe we can. Maybe this is the ultimate tribute to the
Football Review Committee
. Jim Gavin is big on KPIs – or, Key Performance Indicators for the people whose lives are mercifully free of LinkedIn's assault on the language. But even he couldn't have imagined that one of the markers of the effect of the new football rules would be to make people forget the flaws in the format of the championship.
It's worth restating, just for clarity. This is still 24 games to get rid of just four teams. It's still the case that some counties who have lost three matches aren't yet gone from the championship. It's still the case that some of them might not even need to win this weekend to progress.
Since the championship began at the start of April, the collective record of
Derry
,
Clare
,
Roscommon
and
Cork
reads: Played 15, Won 3, Drew 2, Lost 10. All three wins came against Division Four opposition. Yet they're all still nominally in with a shout.
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The Rossies have posted one victory since the start of the championship, a 19-point win over London, who went on to be one of only two teams not to win a game in the Tailteann Cup. Yet as long as they get at least a draw against Cork in Portlaoise, Davy Burke's side will go through to the last 12.
Derry sit alongside London and Waterford as the only teams in the country not to win a game in the 2025 championship so far. Yet they can feasibly still go through even if they lose to Dublin in Newry. It's unlikely, yes. But it's far from impossible. If the Dubs beat them by one and Armagh beat Galway by five, Paddy Tally's side sails on. Three defeats and one draw from four games and they would be just as alive in the championship as Armagh are.
Armagh's Rian O'Neill celebrates a two point score with Óisín Conaty against Dublin in Round 2 of the championship earlier this month. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
So when someone asks you why the silly, meddling GAA had to go messing around with the format again, this is why. It's football sponsored by Hotel California – teams are checking out all over the country but still finding it very hard to leave. That won't happen next year. As soon as you lose two games in the 2026 Sam Maguire, your season is done.
As for why it feels like it has worked better this year than before, the reasons are pretty simple. The first, plainly, is the new rules. It was bad enough that the championship structure was full of holes under the old rules – actually sitting through the games made it so much worse.
Whatever you like or don't like about the new rules, everyone can see that the sport is more engaging now. The lulls and longueurs in which to contemplate the pointlessness of the format just aren't there any more.
But there's a deeper and far more obvious reason too – and one that Gavin is blue in the face telling people that no changes to the playing rules or format will ever be able to affect. The field is flatter now than it's been in ages, maybe even in generations.
Dublin
are sixth in the betting. The next three after them are Monaghan, Mayo and Derry. So, essentially, you have nine teams that can either win the All-Ireland or be the spoke in the wheel for one of the others.
When was that ever the case before? You probably have to go back to something like 1999. Galway were defending All-Ireland champions that year but got beaten by Mayo in the Connacht final, who then lost the All-Ireland semi-final to Cork. Cork were league champions but hadn't beaten Kerry in Munster in four years.
Armagh won Ulster despite starting out fifth in the betting behind Donegal, Derry, Down and Tyrone. Kildare were defending Leinster champions but couldn't beat Offaly, who couldn't beat Meath. Dublin couldn't either. It all washed out as a Meath v Cork All-Ireland final, with anything up to half a dozen counties watching on, full sure they were a match for either of them.
This year has precisely that kind of feel. When people say the championship is wide open, they're being polite. What they really mean is that every team is flawed and looks beatable. Kerry are favourites but haven't been tested. Armagh are probably the best around, but nobody's scared of them. Everyone else has lost at least once already.
When the landscape looks like that, the format doesn't matter a damn. Just throw the ball up and get on with it.
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