Kieran Shannon: What’s rare is wonderful in wide open football championship

Between them those four counties have amassed 20 of the past 26 All Irelands; 27 of the past 36. At least one of them from 2002 on had played in their sport’s last game of the year.

Yet here we are now with them all gone. All beaten by just the two points or fewer but beaten all the same, consumed and replaced by what our colleague Larry Ryan would call The Savage Hunger.

We’ve to go all the way back to 1989 for the last time we had a scenario where all four All-Ireland senior finalists were looking to win their first All-Ireland in more than a decade.

Antrim stunning victors of Leinster champions Offaly, had never won the Liam MacCarthy before. Mayo, thanks to a dynamic young manager from Ballaghaderreen called John O’Mahony, were through to their first All-Ireland since winning it in 1951, two years before O’Mahony was even born; sadly, for all their subsequent 10 final appearances, the county would not win an All-Ireland in his lifetime.

Instead the Cork footballers brought Sam Maguire back to Leeside that September for the first time since their manager Billy Morgan did so as a captain 16 years earlier. And Tipperary would see to it that all their famines were over, finally backing up the breakthrough Munster win of ’87 with their first All Ireland in 18 years.

This year’s finals don’t feature teams quite as deprived of All-Ireland finals and titles as Mayo and Antrim back then. All four counties have won at least one All-Ireland in the 21st century. But with the exception of Clare’s, all their successes were before any of us had an IPhone. Seán Óg had a big 02 symbol emblazoned across his chest receiving the cup in ’05 and back then it was to get you to buy a Nokia.

Pádraic Joyce is right. Football needed a novel pairing like the one it has.

It’s had ones before and not that long ago – in 2012 Donegal and Mayo ended up in the final when at the start of that summer at least four other counties, including a Kildare team coached by one Kieran McGeeney, would have been fancied ahead of either of them.

But it especially needed one this year when there’s been so much gloom and deserved criticism around how the sport is now played and it has spent so much time overshadowed by the hurling.

Now it is just after a weekend that served up a couple of thrilling games and drew exactly the same attendance as the hurling did over its two semi-finals – 122,000.

Central to those huge attendances was the existence and promise of novelty. And it’s why we’ll hardly have a year where there’s such a demand and chase for tickets across both finals. In 2012 we might have had that Donegal-Mayo football final but in the hurling Kilkenny were in their 12th final in 14 years. The 2017 hurling final featured two ravenous counties, Galway and Waterford, but the football saw Dublin winning their third of six consecutive All Irelands. These next two Sundays are the Hunger Games.

Freshness was also key to deciding just who those finalists were.

Kieran McGeeney may well be in his 10th year as Armagh manager, and you could argue his 11th at the helm given the scope and influence Paul Grimley afforded him in 2014 when he brought them within a point of beating Donegal and reaching an All Ireland final. But throughout that time he has ensured his backroom team has had a right combination of continuity and freshness. Kieran Donaghy only joined the set-up in year seven of the project. Conleith Gilligan only came on board this season on the back of helping Kilcoo to an All Ireland.

Jack O’Connor and Kerry similarly need to shake it up – on the field, in their backroom – and they will. Though this was only his third year back in charge, there was minimum change in his management team. As important as stability is, it can also lead to a staleness that was reflected in Kerry’s performance last Saturday and all season.

Jack will be back, at least for one more year, and will have the sense to shake it up without blowing it up, but will also know that he’s on the clock and that it’s harder to recruit selectors when they calculate that their first year could well be their last because it’ll be likely yours.

For the first season in his career David Clifford does not deserve an All Star and for only the second time he will not be getting one and possibly not even a nomination. If his club or division go on another run deep into the winter, he and his brother Paudie need an even lengthier break in the league than any they’ve had to date. Shane O’Donnell has played in only one league game for Clare these past three years. That policy has done him and his team no harm.

What way Kerry as a team approach the league though will be interesting. Nowadays it would seem that the Division Two final is the one to reach; the past four years a team that participated in it – or, if it wasn’t for Covid like Mayo in 2021, would have – have gone on to reach the All Ireland. Outside of Kerry themselves, winning Division One titles hasn’t helped; anyone else who has won it from 2019 on has been knocked out at the All Ireland quarter-final stage.

But Kerry need to get back into the habit of winning close games against top teams; as criticised as Mickey Harte subsequently was, did the rot this year for Kerry set in with that one-point loss to Derry with their Glen players in Tralee back in January? In Munster they’re not sure of getting close games against top teams. The same with their Sam Maguire group. The league though does guarantee such a programme of games. O’Connor from 2022 and 2009 and 2006 and 2004 knows that better anyone else.

The weekend carried a lot of echoes of the past. Kerry losing a game scarily similar to 2021 (overtime again), 2002 (Armagh again having been four points up at halftime) and even 2020 (the high ball around the square again). Armagh edging a semi-final like they did in 2002 after for so long considered a team that couldn’t win a big or tight game in Croker.

And then there’s Donegal. In 2011 they won a Division Two title. Won Ulster. Lost an All Ireland semi-final by two points. The same as this year. We know what happened in 2012.

What will happen in 2025? Who knows. It’s wide open, just like this year’s.