Which Provincial Championship Saw The Most Black Cards Handed Out?

The provincial championships came to a close yesterday, thank God, with the same winners as usual emerging triumphant (though Donegal did end a famine stretching back to 2012).

As a farewell to the first ever set of provincial championships played under the black card rules, we decided to ferment some inter-provincial tension, and check out which province saw the most black card action.

One can already the rumbling of dissension up north, as the Ulster partisans get ready to defend themselves. For the immediate assumption on most people's part is that Ulster is very much the spiritual home of the black card. Indeed, the Ulster championship is often assumed to be the midwife that gave birth to the concept. The chief reason for its existence.

And in a simple tabulation reveals that Ulster does indeed come out on top.

In ten Ulster championship matches, 15 black cards were brandished by referees. The controversial Armagh-Cavan encounter and the Tyrone-Monaghan game, which ended with Mickey Harte marching onto the pitch and eye-balling Eddie Kinsella, both saw three black cards doled out.

Amazingly, these games alone saw more black cards than the whole of the Leinster championship, the most doveish/naive province of all. In ten championship games, Louth's Brian White and Wexford's Conor Carty were the only players in Leinster to receive black.

Ulster supporters might counter that their championship is a tense bear-pit ('Ulster is a minefield' - another candidate for GAA cliche of the decade) full of grim battles, whereas the Leinster championship is the home of the turkey shoot. However, it does not automatically follow that tight games produce more black cards. In Connacht, where two black cards were handed out in six games, the extremely tight and cagey Mayo-Roscommon match witnessed no black cards, while the sleepy and relatively one-sided Connacht final saw Barry Moran being shown black.

Surprisingly, seven black cards were racked up in Munster championship, which consisted of just six matches. Most of these cards were brandished in the Clare-Waterford battles, three in the drawn game and two early on in the replay.