Kerry legend Darragh Ó Sé says that Mayo’s facile win over Roscommon shows there’s a glass ceiling for teams outside the big three or four.
Darragh Ó Sé, writing in his column for The Irish Times, has painted a bleak picture of the GAA Football Championship in the wake of Mayo’s utter destruction of Roscommon in Monday’s All-Ireland quarter-final replay at Croke Park.
The former Kerry footballer was in the stands to see Roscommon capitulate from the early moments of the game, with Mayo running out 4-19 to 0-9 winners in a game that was never in question from the get-go.
Using the example of Rossies manager Kevin McStay, whom he admires for eschewing the ‘grand, comfortable place to spend the summer’ that is The Sunday Game studio, Ó Sé feels that any manager of team outside of Dublin, Kerry, Mayo and Tyrone is fighting a losing battle from the start.
“If these quarter-finals told us anything, it’s that there’s no prospect of glory in this game outside three or four counties,” Ó Sé writes.
“You always aim for the stars but lets’ call a spade a spade – the managerial jobs that are likely to end with your players walking up the steps of the Hogan Stand are very few and far between. We’ve always known that but it was really driven home with these quarter-finals. If you take over one of these smaller counties, there’s automatically a glass ceiling above you.”
He also points out that none of the four teams in the semi-finals will be returning to footage from their last games, as they will not prove instructive against their only true rivals to lift Sam Maguire.
“The remaining four teams won’t care about that now. Mayo at least got their warning in the first Roscommon game. The other three are going into the semi-final knowing that what they’ve come up against so far is going to be of very little use to them the next day.”
To read the rest of Ó Sé’s column, click here.
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