Frank Roche: Leinster football in the bare old times – results show a province in rag order besides Dublin

Over two decades on from when All-Ireland SFC quarter-finals became a staple of the GAA calendar, Louth have never contested a single one. But if they can beat Cork in Inniskeen, their adopted home from home just across the Monaghan border, Louth will be proud members of 2024’s top-eight elite.

Cork are 4/7 favourites, but this is no Rebel shoo-in. Without question, Louth are now firmly established as the second-best team in Leinster. But then you take a pregnant pause to ponder: what does that actually mean?

Perversely, Leinster football has never had it so good – all thanks to Dublin. Nine All-Irelands out of 13 constitutes a strike rate that no other province, let alone county, has ever achieved. Now scratch beneath that veneer to reveal almost an entire province in rag order.

Last weekend was another grim chapter in the never-ending story of Leinster football’s collapse as a competitive entity. Blaming Dublin’s monopoly on the Delaney Cup, for sucking all life and hope from the rest, is an arguable thesis.

What cannot be denied is that Leinster counties haven’t merely been cast adrift by the Dubs; they are falling further behind the rest. For years, league tables never lied but now championship tables are doing likewise.

This is the second year of the All-Ireland SFC group format. Four Leinster counties qualified among the top 16 but only two advanced to the last 12 after Westmeath and Meath finished pointless after three rounds.

Louth just about held on to second place in their group, despite a 14-point reality check against Kerry in Portlaoise.

Even mighty Dublin were scrambling at the death to avoid defeat against Mayo, albeit in magnificent fashion culminating in Cormac Costello’s fisted equaliser. But Dublin aren’t the issue; in all likelihood, their performance level will step up a notch in the quarter-finals.

Even more worrying than the failure of Meath and Westmeath was the abject results graph in the Tailteann Cup.

Just look at the four group tables: Longford, Wexford, Carlow and Offaly all finished last. Only Carlow managed a point, having shared the spoils with local rivals Laois. The scoring differences of Longford (minus 26) and Offaly (minus 28) are particularly jarring.

To date, Leinster counties have dominated the GAA’s new second-tier championship, with Westmeath and Meath claiming the first two titles. Laois could yet complete a hat-trick but start as marginal semi-final underdogs against Antrim tomorrow; overall, they are fourth favourites in a field of four.

Why the pessimism? Maybe because their only scalps to date have been two teams from Leinster plus New York.

For a while, their preliminary quarter-final against New York lurched towards disaster. Just in time, they rediscovered some of their early-season league sparkle by toppling Kildare, the poster boys of Leinster underachievement.

Glenn Ryan’s subsequent resignation was no surprise. He readily accepted the team had failed to move forward in his three years, during which they had fallen from Division 1 to Division 3. And while he pinpointed the loss of quality players this season, he conceded: “We should have been able to perform better than what we did . . . I don’t think I got the best out of these lads.”

Later that night, Tomás Ó Sé offered his intriguing take on the demise of Kildare, pinpointing the long, barren years on either side of their successful period under Mick O’Dwyer.

“Sometimes you wonder do they need a reality check, and are the expectations in the county skewed?” he mused on The Sunday Game. “Because all these Kildare players listen to is that they should be competing with Dublin, they should be competing here, they should be competing there – and they’re not actually minding what they’re supposed to be competing against. They start off the national league, and the pressure builds from the word go. So if they lose or have a poor performance, it adds and it adds. And I thought this year must have been so unenjoyable for everybody involved.”

Host Jacqui Hurley reminded that they had run Dublin to two points in the 2023 Leinster SFC, while fellow pundit Peter Canavan countered that they were unlucky to be relegated in Ryan’s first season (2022) and had produced two brilliant U-20 teams.

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“They should be doing better than what they are, and it will be a very attractive job for some manager,” Canavan maintained. “You’d like to think if they got all the players pulling together the way they should be . . . absolutely, the talent is there. On paper, that Kildare team should be walking through the Tailteann Cup.”

To which Ó Sé replied: “I’ve no doubt they’re a better team than what they’ve performed all year long, but I still say that they have a skewed way of looking at where they should be, and where they actually are. I don’t think they’re anywhere near – and I’d compare Meath the same way.”

A neat segue to conclude with Leinster’s other sleeping giant. While Kildare’s population is circa 247,000, Meath aren’t far behind at more than 220,000 – and they can boast a far more recent All-Ireland pedigree. And yet last Sunday, facing a Monaghan team that had lost eight and drawn one of their previous nine games, they found themselves nine points adrift approaching the hour.

They battled back to lose by three, but the Meath Chronicle was not convinced. “Don’t let the final deficit cloud just how easy this 1-17 to 1-14 win was for Monaghan as Meath exited the All-Ireland SFC race with a tame, insipid and uninspiring performance,” their match report began.

The Meath Chronicle later reflected that, when playing with freedom and exuberance, Meath look “more than decent, but when they play without structure or a plan, like they did early on, they looked like a collection of lost individuals devoid of ideas or inspiration”.

None of which has seemingly discouraged Colm O’Rourke’s desire to carry on for a third season – and beyond – having placed his faith in youth.

“I think I’ll go to the county board and ask them to give me five years as a minimum because it will certainly take another two or three years,” the Meath legend suggested afterwards. “We will be better next year, we’ll be in contention for promotion from the second division, and by the following year, we’ll be in contention with all the big teams.”

A bullish note that belies the current reality in Meath, Kildare – and beyond.