The long wait is almost over and (televised) Championship football is just a couple of days away. The doctors have been blazing a trail for Balls HQ all week as we fight off a serious case of Championship fever. It turns out prescriptions are not the answer though, as the professionals all agree the best cure for this ailment is simply watching Saturday night's game.
Monaghan V Fermanagh isn't the most enticing start to the summer's televised GAA, at least for the neutral. But shouldn't there be more excitement about this game? After all, Monaghan are being tipped by many to be the eventual Ulster champions this year, while Fermanagh showed signs of real improvement last year and were unlucky to lose to Mayo in Castlebar during the qualifiers.
The problem is that Pete McGrath doesn't have the same Fermanagh team in 2017, or anything like it.
Ulster based GAA journalist Declan Bogue made a salient point when speaking about Fermanagh on the 'We Are Ulster' podcast this. From the fifteen that started that Mayo game last year, only six remain on the panel.
You have to bare this in mind. They played Mayo last year and should have beaten them in Castlebar. But of that team that played against Mayo, only six are available. Of that fifteen that started that Mayo team, only six are available for this weekend.
This appears to be an repetitive issue within the Fermanagh, that players come and go, their careers seemed to be short lived. Bogue continued to highlight the fact, that 20 of the players that faced Dublin in the All Ireland quarter-final in 2015 are now gone.
There’s a picture that caught my eye last week at the press event in the Fermanagh training ground. It was the panel of the All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin in 2015. Of that picture, 20 people - 20 people! - out of the panel are gone. Now Dublin couldn’t sustain that kind of player loss, but for Fermanagh it seems to be an annual thing, they just basically lose three quarters of their panel and start all over again.”
That's an incredible stat. A county the size of Fermanagh reaching the All-Ireland quarter-final is a great achievement and one you would think would inspire even greater days ahead. Instead, two thirds of the panel are not around just two years later. It's insane!
From the Dublin panel that day, the only one who is now absent, is Rory O'Carroll who is abroad in New Zealand. And this is the county with the most strength in depth in the country, but could we honestly say Dublin would be winning All-Irelands if 20 of their panel from 2015?
Presenter Damien Donohoe described the over turn of players within Fermanagh as the 'blight of New York', saying that it's something you would see on the New York team and that other counties in Ireland wouldn't sustain the level of player turn over that is apparent in Fermanagh.
Whether it be work, or whether it's just a thing were you come in, you do it for a while and you more you move on in your life. I don’t know. If you look at any other county panel, there doesn’t seem to be quite the same player turn over. But even look at it from this year from last year, you’ve lost Damien Kelly, Marty O’Brien and Niall Cassidy in defence. I mean, that’s half your defence, and when that’s wiped out? My God, you’re in serious bother. If you took out half the Dublin defence, you say right, Jonny Cooper, James McCarthy and Cian O’Sullivan, you’re all gone. Imagine how many teams would fancy themselves against the Dublin defence then. With Fermanagh, it’s a point worth noting.
You can listen to the podcast in full here.
It will be interesting to see how Fermanagh perform on Saturday night. More than is reasonable, they seem able to adjust to this incredible loss of players. They were competitive last year without a huge amount of players. One thinks this year might be a step too much though, having already been relegated in the League, finishing bottom of Division 2.
