[ad_1]
The much-maligned Leinster soccer championship is well in the rearview mirror right now. No problem, as the Leinster football championship is no longer a place for detailed and in-depth analysis.
“So why did Dublin beat Meath today?”
“Hey, well kicks, blah blah blah, a lot of pressure on the opposing kicker, blah, blah, blah, great use of the ball … * short silence * … heh, could you bother with this? ad break? ”
No, the Leinster football championship is better suited to big macroeconomic questions and harrowing philosophical musings. Namely, the futility of existence, the nature of loyalty, the goal of competitive sport, and the dangers of catastrophic success.
No one else comes up with the idea that anyone other than the team in blue and navy is going to win the province, except maybe a few people in the capital.
The only people who come up with popular buzz about ‘Meath is not afraid of Dubs’ are the Dubs themselves.
The Dubs are the only ones with the heart and enthusiasm to act as a ‘hype-man’ for the province. The only people who come up with popular buzz about “Meath is not afraid of Dubs” are the Dubs themselves.
Former Dublin Mayor Nial Ring insisted on ‘Today with Claire Byrne’ last week that Mickey Harte’s arrival in Louth (playing in Division 4 next year) heralded a new era of competitiveness in the province. .
When it comes to Leinster, Dublin GAA conscious folks today give off the same vibe as an overly competitive dad feeling a bit guilty about having a 9-0 lead in a FussBall game, and now he’s trying to convince his dejected son to keep playing.
“Ah Nathan, come on, you can still win this, it’s not over … Nathan, put down the Playstation controller / pint and come back to the table … Come on Nathan, it’s only 9-0, you’re supposed to get to 10. “
On the contrary, the non-Dubs in Leinster are borrowing the principles and thinking of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The RCP, a curious little sect of British politics, argued that the path to socialism was to push capitalism to such extremes that it inevitably provoked its own reaction.
“I hope Dublin will beat Mayo in the final by 25 points after beating Cavan by 39, so we can cut to the chase,” a non-Dub told me after the Leinster final.
Perhaps this is the medium-term future of the All-Ireland Football Championship.
Dublin fans, distrustful of the surrounding narrative, shudder every time their team raises the score against some team from their country, they continue to riddle their body with bullets long after they are dead and long after those watching at home. have switched to darts.
Meanwhile, fans of those same country teams sit there laughing like maniacs as their team is mercilessly knocked to the ground for the 756th time in a row. They sit there, sipping happy pints and wallowing majestically in the sheer farce of it all.
This could be Leinster’s championship in the future.
Some GAA executives might worry that this is not an entirely healthy situation from a competitive standpoint, although they would be slow to reflect on it publicly, but it still has potential. We can imagine reporters from Vice and The Bleacher Report arriving from the United States to cover this bizarre competition where fans cheer for opponents and collapse in their chairs when their own team scores. It could become a global curiosity of the kind that Transworld Sport used to cover back in the day.
Many have suggested eliminating the provincial championships entirely. This wake-up call usually rises to a deafening crescendo in the immediate aftermath of Leinster’s soccer final and then collapses into a whisper after Roscommon beats Connacht or Cavan wins at Ulster the next day.
It seems like an odd remedy for the problem of player apathy in the mid- and low-ranking counties, to end their only achievable championship shot. It’s hard to imagine Cavan’s players crying with joy after topping Group C in the all-Ireland soccer championship / Champions League group stage.
The rest of Leinster, of course, have more or less abandoned the dream of championship trophies. This is the crux of the matter.
We need your consent to upload this YouTube content.We use YouTube to manage additional content that may set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Review your data and accept it to load the content.Manage preferences
Listen to the RTÉ GAA Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Those who have paid close attention will have noticed that the level of militancy around what we will delicately call ‘the Dublin problem’ is at a much more advanced and intense stage in the ‘rest of Leinster’ than outside the province.
Rather worryingly for the association, this is not limited to angry fans and journalists, but has spread to actual gamers, as evidenced by a series of tweets on the subject last week.
In the wake of these regular beatings, Dublin fans often express disappointment with the rest of Leinster, disappointment at their attitude. They are disappointed, in particular, with Meath.
All parties agree that Dublin-Meath games are no longer fun. It would be a difficult task to argue otherwise.
Even the nature of the abrasion has changed.
At the height of the rivalry, it was all taunting Meath’s broad cast of pantomime villains followed by a lighthearted outburst of ‘Wayhey, we know where your farm is, we know where your farm is, La La La La.’
Now there is a much more concerned and panicky note about the abuse.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why don’t you give us a game? * Grabs Meath’s lifeless body by the lapels * THEY’RE GONNA DIVIDE US IN TWO! WHY DON’T YOU GIVE US A FUCK” N ‘GAME? “
Martin McHugh had a rather intriguing, albeit left-wing, theory a few years ago that Celtic Tiger destroyed Meath football because all strong farmers produced sons who went to work for Deloitte and went soft. That Meath football had collapsed on the altar of desk jobs in accounting firms. Anyone can guess where the modern ascension of Dublin football fits into this parable, but perhaps it’s a completely separate question.
Where is the spirit of Mick Lyons ?, people ask. Summerhill’s granite back row was the embodiment of the culchie defiance against the Dubs, the ultimate symbol of Meath’s triumphalism.
As it happens, I ran into Mick Lyons with a friend outside the Chipper near Croke Park after a League final a few years ago.
“What do you think of the game, Mick?” asked my friend.
“If the Leinster team were to join, they wouldn’t go near the Dubs,” he said quickly, before getting into a car with one of his teammates.
So that’s where that spirit currently resides.
Many solutions are sold, most of which fail for some reason. There is consensus that help, whether financial or strategic, is needed for the rest of Leinster in particular. Similar to the type of directed work that took place in the capital when the region was considered the association’s problem child in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Most Dublin fans agree on this point, although they obviously would rather not see their financial support plummet. (“The point, Nathan, is to raise your FussBall level, not drag me down”)
But Dublin fans still resent that each of their landslide victories is the signal for another debate on the state of the game. This is understandable.
We face the All-Ireland series again. Dubliners these days have more time for the moral fiber of Munster, Connacht, and Ulster compared to their easily discouraged Leinster brothers.
The only time you’ll ever hear a Dublin fan say a kind word about May today is when the conversation revolves around Leinster football, and he offers a few words of respect to reluctant Westerners, who can at least afford it. .
Mickey Graham has done wonders in the past, but a 1/100 scream seems like a difficult task even for him.
In the meantime, Dublin fans can reflect on the curious situation that some of their biggest foes hope to win big, very big, this weekend.
Follow Dublin v Cavan and Mayo v Tipperary this weekend via our live blogs on RTÉ.ie / sport and the RTÉ News app, watch live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player or listen to the commentary on RTÉ Radio 1.
[ad_2]