The 2015 All Ireland Senior Football Championship

DDC1990 wrote: »

I may be wrong Tod but your idea that Kerry get a QF against an A side QF isn't right.

If Kerry win Munster, the Quarter Final for Kerry will be against the loser of the Ulster Final or the team that beats them. So Donegal, Monaghan, Armagh, Tyrone or the qualifying team that beats them. Hardly an easy draw as you put it.

Not only that but then you have another Ulster team in the Semi. If Cork get their act together, Kerry and the Ulster side of the draw will have the toughest route there.

For my money:
Ulster: Monaghan
Connacht: Roscommon (have had a feeling about them all year)
Munster: Kerry (but nowhere near as easy as people are predicting, Cork won't play like they did against Dublin)
Leinster: Dublin

I don't know how you can be so sure that cork won't play like they did against dublin again. seems to be a recurring theme. the lack of basic footballing ability when they have possession of some of our players is what keep striking me. dublin backs can come up the field and look so comfortable. loughrey is a half back and should be played out there.

Cork may come within few points to kerry simply as kerry will always control the game tempo but may or may not have appetite or desire destroy cork as unlike last year don't need confidence of such win and I expect kerry be under cooked a bit in they won't show full hand when know have cork number before ball is kicked


Of course we will read how they fear cork they are a challenge the usual yerra and some in cork so gullible they will swallow an anchor and belive it when nothing is farther from the truth


Ulster hard to call

Kerry and Dublin only all Ireland contenders
Mayo haven't a hope under duel management it simply won't work
Galway under Walsh coming team had fine work out v Dublin in challenge last week


Walsh good manager and playing a defensive system but have midfield and forwards

Imo could win connaught and meath tipp two teams do well in the qualifiers



Cork havent a hope winning all Ireland but lucky draw may get to all Ireland quatre final in another false dawn

Leinster - Dublin
Connaught - Mayo
Ulster - Donegal
Munster - Kerry

AI - Kerry

Dubs obviously favourites for the AI, justifiably so and will be the team to stop, but I reckon at some stage, whether the SF or final, Kerry will face Dublin, and I think that Kerry could do a number on them in a one off game, especially if Dublin have the hype going into over-drive, there's just something about Kerry.

Donegal with an outside chance of beating either two, but I don't see Donegal beating the two of them. I reckon Sam will either be in Dublin or Kerry by the end of the year, I'll give Kerry the nod just because they have a bit more of the cute-hoorism about them.

Monaghan should win Ulster given the draw.

Can't see them realistically challenging for the All Ireland though. They aren't good enough to win it. An Ulster win and a semi final would be a brilliant season for them and represent progress. Thing is though is whether they have enough to push on after that. I don't think they do.


Dublin will win the All Ireland but outside of that you could have a very interesting championship with a fairly level playing field, the rossies, Armagh, Galway, down etc all primed for a good run i'd say.

The B side looks like bit of a nightmare. The tough side of Ulster plus Galway and Meath will all be in there at some point.

randd1 wrote: »

Leinster - Dublin
Connaught - Mayo
Ulster - Donegal
Munster - Kerry

AI - Kerry

Dubs obviously favourites for the AI, justifiably so and will be the team to stop, but I reckon at some stage, whether the SF or final, Kerry will face Dublin, and I think that Kerry could do a number on them in a one off game, especially if Dublin have the hype going into over-drive, there's just something about Kerry.

Donegal with an outside chance of beating either two, but I don't see Donegal beating the two of them. I reckon Sam will either be in Dublin or Kerry by the end of the year, I'll give Kerry the nod just because they have a bit more of the cute-hoorism about them.

I wouldn't be certain of the result between Dublin and Kerry but one thing i can tell you with absolute certainty the Dublin management and players are not effected by the stuff you're talking about. Always find it lazy to suggest otherwise. The bulk of the side have two AI medals and experience coming out of their arses. You couldn't get a more level headed man in charge either.

I think Dublin will win the AI.

Huge respect for Kerry. Very interested to see if they recapture the same bite they had last year. If they can, they are a match for all.

I sincerely doubt Mayo will eclipse their performance level under Horan so you'd have to say they won't be good enough to beat Dublin in a semi.

Hope i'm wrong about Donegal but i think this might be the year the age of some of their key players shows. Would pay double to see Dublin try out plan B against them this year.

Of the rest, Armagh and Tyrone will test (without beating) the aforementioned if they meet them in August.

Jampip wrote: »

Fermanagh

Jampip wrote: »

Care to elaborate? They made the final of Division 3 this year. Monaghan did the same two years ago, nobody had given them a prayer against Donegal in the Ulster final and they won it.

In Sean Quigley they have the top scorer in the League and a forward who would win his place in most teams over the country.

I think sums it up more than adequately.

Stoner wrote: »

Nidgeweasel, since 1992, I've called you guys plenty of things, but never culchies, it shows how we need to get over these things and talk more. Deep down us Dubs refer all of our Ulster friends collectively.

It's true though you get the feeling that the teams don't like each other. But we have many such enemies, yet so have Donegal, you really get the feeling that Mayo and Donegal have a dysfunctional relationship too..

See if he had have said Mayo I'd have agreed. There's definitely an underlying issue there.I really don't think there's any big problem towards the Dubs from ourselves other than the fact it's Dublin and everything that entails.

Are we boggers or nordies? I'm not au fait with distinctions for people from counties outside the capital. I had typed boggers initially but changed it to culchies last minute.

So Louth will get an injection of the Micko factor this year it seems.

Nidgeweasel wrote: »

Are we boggers or nordies? I'm not au fait with distinctions for people from counties outside the capital. I had typed boggers initially but changed it to culchies last minute.

You must have missed the "Mullagh" phase of the noughties. We were all "bleeding Mullaghs".

I'm not sure if it had anything to do with the fact that the town bordering Meath in my own blessed county has pretty much become a satelitte area of Dublin.

Lads / Lassies, hopefully this post makes it up here, there is a great event to get a good discussion going on the 2015 All-Ireland Championship and is being held in the Hotel Kilmore in Cavan on Friday week (8 May 2015).

The Ballybay Senior team (Monaghan) are hosting an All Ireland preview night and have secured a very interesting panel - Declan O'Sullivan (Kerry), Michael Meehan (Galway), Anthony Moyles (Meath) and Kevin Cassidy (Donegal). Declan Bogue (Author and journalist) will MC the event and should ensure an interesting debate between the panel.

Four course meal, wine and other entertainment on the night also, all for €50!! Promises to be brilliant!

Tickets can be bought online. I know that I can't post a link for it but if you search 'Ballybay All-Ireland Preview'. you will find the link to buy tickets and more information.

A good read from Malachy Clerkin on the Irish Times.

GAA grounds grind into gear as football roadshow begins

On a bright May morning over a decade ago, your correspondent sat across a rickety table in the Paragon Bar in Clones town chewing the fat with the proprietor, one Paddy Freeman. The championship was around the corner and the spirits were high and the idea was to do a piece on people at the periphery of the whole show.
Freeman was a perfect candidate – loud, garrulous, full of chat and mad for the summer to get here. Ulster teams were winning All-Irelands at the time and somewhere along the way to doing so, they generally had to pass through Clones.
In the Paragon, all comers were made welcome. The walls were red, with murals drawn of players from all over, some of whom had never set foot in Clones in their lives. Cormac McAnallen wasn’t long gone and took pride of place on one wall, with Michael Donnellan an altogether more esoteric choice on the one adjacent. The point wasn’t subtle – this was a GAA bar. More to the point, this was a football bar. In a football town.

“This town has nothing,” Freeman piped up at one stage. “Clones isn’t a bad town but it has nothing. The jobs are gone, the young people are gone. If it wasn’t for that football field up over the hill there, there’d be nothing in the town at all. But the football field keeps us going. The summer is mighty.”

Unique
Clones was and is its own unique little corner of the landscape but there are towns like it and Paddy Freemans like it all over the place, each of them waiting for the championship to bowl through over the coming months. We like to think of the championship as a caravan that wends its leisurely way through the country, but the truth is that it comes and goes in a flash.
Eleven weeks from now, everything moves to Croke Park for the various endgames. Most towns see a couple of games at most and the jamboree heads off somewhere else. Last year, for instance, 27 towns and cities hosted championship games (25 if we take out New York and London).
Dublin had 14 separate days of it between football and hurling, Thurles had seven, Portlaoise had six. Next on the list, maybe surprisingly, was Carlow with five. On down through Clones, Mullingar, Limerick and Ennis with four each and a multitude of twos and threes and ones. That’s 25 towns in 24 counties – the Waterford footballers played a Munster championship game in Dungarvan, the Waterford hurlers played a qualifier in Waterford.

Some towns are made for championship hosting. Some can take it or leave it. One Sunday the spotlight could fall on the sort of place where farmers have “PARKING €5” signs stuck to the gates of fields a good three miles from the ground. The next you could be lost on a side street somewhere asking for directions, only to be met with a grudging: “Is there a game on?”

Take Omagh, for instance. You will travel many miles across this fair land without encountering more fervent and committed supporters of their county than Tyrone people. They were long and loud in affirmation of their faith long before they won anything and the years of plenty haven’t diluted their appetite for worship. Yet it’s entirely possible to be on Market Street on a championship Sunday and only barely feel the pulse of it.
The reason is simple. Healy Park is a good mile-and-a-half out the road from the town centre. It’s up a hill and down a dale, out past a park and a school and a housing estate and the Silver Birch hotel. That holy grail of a summer Sunday – a pre-match pint out in the fresh air – isn’t impossible but it’s a big ask.

Something on
On the flipside, you go to somewhere like Tullamore and there’s no escaping the fact that There’s Something On. Offaly folk may have had nothing to shout about these many years; enthusiasm for the prospects of their hurlers and footballers could sink to unplumbed depths, and still the layout of Tullamore and the siting of O’Connor Park at the top of the town make it a grand place to take in a championship day out.
Last summer, Galway and Kilkenny met for a two-game mini-epic in Tullamore. From the Bridge House carvery up as far as O’Connor’s and Kelly’s on the bridge, the streets teemed with devotees. When Henry Shefflin and Joe Canning traded matching points from the ends of the earth to draw the first game, the traffic chugged for an hour afterwards as radio pundits broke it all down.
Proximity to the town attached to the ground is key to a good championship day out. The old reliables like Thurles, Clones, Killarney and Kilkenny don’t work solely for this reason but it’s a damn good start. The square in Thurles to the Town End in Semple Stadium is a 10-minute walk. Ditto Main Street in Killarney to the Lewis Road entrance of Fitzgerald Stadium.

It would be a lazy stroller who needed more than a quarter of an hour between leaving Langtons in Kilkenny and taking a seat in Nowlan Park. And generations of Ulstermen have refined the art of ordering a last one in the Creighton at the bottom of Fermanagh Street in Clones and still being on the Hill for the end of Amhrán na bhFiann.
Location, location, location. Pearse Stadium in Salthill is damned twice – too far out of the city to make it a focal point, far too open to the vagaries of the wind coming in off the Atlantic. O’Moore Park in Portlaoise has always felt a bit soulless, stuck to the side of the M7 with a vast bank of apartments overlooking the pitch.
In Mullingar, any potential majesty of a day in Cusack Park can’t but be undermined by the feeling the game is being played in the car park of the Dunnes Stores that backs onto the pitch.

Wexford Park is so far out of the town centre that you sometimes worry about a game getting too interesting, for fear that any over-eager boisterousness could wake sleeping kids in the quiet neighbourhood nearby.
Some grounds have character. Pearse Park in Longford is a handsome little music box of a stadium. Dr Cullen Park in Carlow is the only ground in the country where the players have to go through an underground tunnel to make it from the dressing rooms to the pitch. Celtic Park in Derry is dug into the side of a hill, Hillary Step-style, with the Brandywell below it and the city graveyard sprawling away up across the Lone Moor Road.
Some grounds do not have character. For all of Clones’s attributes as a hosting town, St Tiernach’s Park itself is a hotchpotch of half-carried-out ideas and well-intentioned plans.

Páirc Uí Chaoimh’s reputation as a desperate old kip should have been dealt with long ago, but it has taken until now for the diggers to move in. Cusack Park in Ennis has been rusting at the edges for years, its main distinguishing feature being the country’s most battered and tattered old scoreboard.
Scoreboards make for a fun case study, as it happens. This being the GAA, there is obviously no consistency from one ground to the next. The one in Ennis would shame the lowliest junior club – wooden slats that haven’t changed in decades, chalkboard-style numbers faded from the rain. Roscommon’s Hyde Park scoreboard is a huge green galvanised edifice that doubles as a shelter from the rain.
In Ballycastle, it’s a matter of two stakes in the ground, two stakes supporting them and a ladder up the back with a hassled scoreboard operator hoping to God that the free-takers are having an off day.

Elsewhere, modernity’s creeping advance reveals itself in different ways. In Castlebar, the digitised scoreboard is striped across the main security control centre. In forward-thinking Tullamore, they flash up the name of the scorer after every point – something not even the bells-and-whistles merchants in Croke Park have ever seen fit to match.
Some grounds have clocks. Some even have clocks that work. Some, like the one in Portlaoise, go up to 35:00 before being reset to 00:00 for the second half. If you see furrowed brows up in the press box there some days, it’s because cloth-brained hacks are trying to add 35 to 17 while noting down a sub and keeping an eye on the kick-out. We were never warned that a facility for numbers would be part of the job spec.
Yet for all the variations from ground to ground, certain things are the same no matter where you go. From MacCumhaill Park in Ballybofey to Fraher Field in Dungarvan, you will still run afoul of yellow-bibbed stewards who guard the entrance to the Árd Comhairle with their lives. You will still pay €2 for your choice of warm Coke or cold tea and your chances of eating anything that isn’t a crisp or chocolate are slim to none.

Best fed ground
Oddly enough, if we take Croker out of the equation, the best championship ground in which to get fed is Ruislip in northwest London. They get one big day out a year – the Connacht championship opener at the end of May. To their immense credit, they hang up their brightest colours.
There might only be a crowd of around 3,000 through the gates, but it’s a proper day out when you get there. The guardians of London GAA throw up a couple of marquees and proceed to make merry. They sling burgers and fire out pints and bottles to beat the band. They stick the other game of the day up on the big screen in the clubhouse while the crowd flows in. It can feel like the one place anywhere all summer that the actual championship is being celebrated.
By the end of July, it all gets funnelled down into a series of weekends in Croke Park. Much and all as supporters and teams are desperate to make it to the All-Ireland series, there’s no doubt that a little of the character gets soaked up in the sponge of Dublin 3.

The various pubs of lore around Croke Park haven’t had a good recent run of it. Quinn’s in Drumcondra has fallen foul of the food safety laws. The Hideout on Campbell’s Row is sadly no longer with us. Gaffney’s in Fairview is still going strong but it’s a bit out of the way and in the wrong direction if you’re coming from or heading to the city.
For all that, Croke Park is still the solitary modern, well-appointed GAA ground in the country. The one place you can be assured that there are enough toilets (not to mention enough clean ones). The rare place you can grab a beer. The only ground with a functioning corporate element, where you can eat properly and comfortably and at your leisure.

Everything ends in Croke Park. For an 83,000-ish seater stadium, there’s barely a bad vantage point. The lower-stand corners where the Hogan and Cusack meet the Canal End aren’t great and if you get stuck right at the end line at pitch level, you’re sometimes better watching on the big screen.
If that ever happens, here’s a tip. On all but the very biggest days in Croke Park, there is always room on the upper level. And there isn’t a single bad seat up there either, assuming you don’t suffer from vertigo.
The key is to walk to your seat like you personally bought it and donated it to Michael Cusack himself. Stroll into the Upper Cusack – making sure to breeze past the security lads without catching their eye – pick a seat a few rows away and go and plonk yourself down. Nobody will question you.

Microclimates
The other tip is to bring both suncream and a heavy coat. No place in Ireland has more microclimates than Croke Park. Even as the summer sun blazes into the Upper Cusack, it can be perishing in the Upper Hogan. Prepare for all eventualities.
Most of all, though, make sure you go. Go anywhere. Go to Thurles or Longford or Castlebar. Go to Killarney for the Munster final and pick out the Reeks in the distance. Go to Breffni Park in a couple of weeks and watch Cavan and Monaghan wrestle away down in the bowl. Go to Limerick next month and use the match programme to shield your eyes from the sun.
And whether your team is there or not, go to Croke Park sometime in August. Take your seat high up on the upper level and feel the place shake as the anthem finishes and the ball is thrown in. For an hour-and-a- half, you are where something matters. The summer is mighty, as Paddy Freeman said.
Where else would you be?