There’s no tournament feel to the football championship whatsoever.
When the World Cup starts, you know fine well it has started.
You know your life is about to change for a month with games to watch every single night of the week. The opening fixture will probably be followed straight up with another match that same evening and there’ll be no looking back from there until it’s over and you genuinely forget what it was you did with your life before the tournament.
Although they only have smaller, more sporadic windows, other events like Wimbledon or golf opens completely take over the calendar for four days or two weeks and you’ll know in no uncertain terms that it has kicked off with coverage on every day and kids in the street playing tennis or infesting driving ranges.
The football championship starts on Sunday and, frankly, most people couldn’t care less.
But here is exactly why everyone is going to be whinging about the state of the championship in a few weeks:
- Despite it all starting on May 7, there’s not another game for two weeks.
- Dublin, the champions, aren’t out until June 3.
- Galway, the Connacht champions, won’t play until five weeks after the opening game of their province.
- That’ll likely be Mayo’s first decent match-up on June 11 too.
So the championship throws in this week but there’s not a whimper about it because, really, who cares outside of New York and Sligo right now?
The game’s on Sunday night but it’s not being streamed anywhere, barely anyone is talking about it let alone reporting on it and, when it’s done – however it’s done – we’ll have to wait for another two weeks to see any more games.
By the time any of the big guns are out, the country will have long since been complaining about how boring and anti-climatic the championship is. Then, of course, when those same teams finally get to play, a lot of them will be running through their opposition for a shortcut on the way to a meaningful tie later in the summer. There’s no stopping the months of apathy beforehand because the way the GAA has set its fixtures up.
Here it is, the big launch of the 2017 championship but rather than having all your weekends from now until the final booked up with drama and mouthwatering action – every Saturday and Sunday – here’s what you have for the first month and a half.
- May 7: New York v Sligo
- May 13: NOTHING
- May 14: NOTHING
- May 20: Monaghan v Fermanagh
- May 21: Donegal v Antrim
- May 21: New York/Sligo v Mayo
- May 21: Leinster first round
- May 27: Cork v Waterford and Clare v Limerick
- May 28: London v Leitrim
- May 28: Derry v Tyrone
- June 3: Leinster quarter-finals – Dublin finally playing
- June 4: Down v Armagh
- June 10/11: Kerry finally playing
- June 11: Tipperary v Cork/Waterford
- June 11: Cavan v Fermanagh/Monaghan
- June 11: Galway v Mayo/Sligo/New York
For the first six weekends, only six teams – New York/Sligo, Clare/Limerick, Cork/Waterford, Louth/Wicklow, Laois/Longford, Carlow/Wexford – will play two games.
Kerry will win and will have to wait another three weeks to play again in the Munster final.
They’ll win that and have to wait another three or four weeks to play again in the quarter-final.
The GAA are obsessed with keeping the provincial structures but not only are they not fair because some teams have to go through a 12-team tournament to get to a quarter-final whereas others have to go through a six-team competition to get to the same stage, but it’s also complete ballsing up the fixture scheduling – which isn’t fair either on counties like Kerry.
As it is, the 2017 championship starts on May 7 but the quarter-finals of the All-Ireland won’t occur until July 30 and then August 5.
That’s 12 or 13 weeks between the start and then. Some teams will play twice in that period. Others will play five. Still, we persist.
There are going to be some boring slogs until then. Thank God for Ulster, eh?
This topic is discussed in-depth at the start of the latest GAA Hour podcast below.
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