The Championship is further kicking into gear this weekend, with the early rounds of the Leinster Championship, which was once a competition but is now simply a collection of teams taking in turns to wilt aside to facilitate the facile procession of Dublin. None of the games this weekend are live on television, presumably because nobody is overly bothered by them.
The Championship structure is absurd: teams fates continue to be heavily influenced by the caprice of Geography, and any competition in which winners do not have to play the same amount of games is evidently archaic, and provincial championships are evidently past their sell-by-date. How they contrast with the National Leagues, which this year made sufficient strides in the GAA consciousness to be considered as good as the sport was going to get until the Croke Park turnstiles begin clicking in August.
Paul Galvin's debut column in today's Sunday Times has accentuated what we all know: that the provincial championships are ranked ahead of only the pre-season tournaments in terms of competitiveness:
I never felt like late April-early May was the time to be switching into serious Championship mode. I don't mind saying I place league football above provincial championship football in terms of importance.
If I had eight or nine league medals instead of the eight or nine provincial championship medals I have, I think I'd have finished my career with more than four All-Irelands.
The league is where you find everything out.
The part about the league performance influencing the All-Ireland championship is particularly interesting. While it is, in fact, the provincial championships which affect the All-Ireland series in terms of structure, it is the league which sets the tone in terms of intensity and performance level. Hence why we see such one-sided bore fests outside of Ulster. Some day, hopefully, the All-Ireland series will be organised in accordance with the league. But we doubt it will be any day soon.
Read the full column in today's Sunday Times.
