The 2023 All Ireland Senior Football Championship (Sam Maguire Cup)

It's too obvious that the tournament wont start until after the group stages for anyone to get really excited.

Bit like the Europa league in soccer. Most people won't be interested until they get a sniff that their team might win.

Looking at the Sunday game Sligo should have won by 1. One point by Niall Murphy given as a wide.

I am disappointed to see the referee getting the blame again, the old chestnut about playing for a draw. But fair play to Glenn Ryan, he is not doing it.

"Sligo had just secured a draw that felt like a victory, David Quinn’s equaliser arriving some seven minutes and 15 seconds into a bout of stoppage-time that had been flagged to last five.

There had been some further hold-ups and Ryan had “no crib” about the extra-time allowed by Joe McQuillan, adding: “If we manage it better, if we were playing for the next ten minutes it wouldn’t make any difference.”

Give it time I say. The fact that Silgo got a good result for them and Colm O'Rourke is taking it VERY seriously to use the Tailteann to rebuild Meath. Which is why he was so would up by Donal Og's comments.

I think there are good signs for the future. The culture and mindset of the fans just has to change. It is when sides/fans go on about winning 'A Tailteann' as a aspiration/stepping stone then we will know the mindset has chance.

At the moment there is sort of a stand off attitude towards it. A new thing with no 'tradition'. If the GAA don't give this at least a decade plus I will be fairly annoyed at them. Let it develop and mature.

There is a little bit of extra jeopardy compared to Sam. The worst third placed team will be replaced by New York. So getting more scores even when taking a bad beating could have some value.

Preliminary Quarter-Finals 10-11.06.2023 (Sat/Sun) (Four Games)

The second-placed team in each of the four groups in Round 1 shall be drawn to play at Home against New York and the three “best placed” third-placed teams in each group. The draw shall be subject to the avoidance of repeat pairings from Round 1 (Group Stage). The three “best placed” third-placed teams across the four groups shall be determined using the following criteria.

(i) Total Number of Points

(ii) Score difference – subtracting the total Scores against from the Scores for

(iii) Highest Total Score For

(iv) Highest Total Goals For

(v) Lowest Total Goals Against

(vi) A Play-Off

We found out in the hurling round robin that casual away fans are not very likely to travel long distance because they know that their is a home game to go to instead and hopefully a few bigger neutral venue games.

Brilliant.

They finally got around to updating https://www.gaa.ie/news/2023-sam-maguire-cup-and-tailteann-cup-structures-explained/ to remove ambiguity around it.

The only reference to Round One now is in relation to it being the entire Group Phase and what they'd previously referred to as "Round 1 games" they're now referring to as Game 1 to avoid the conflicts. I'd been complaining since day 1 of the release on the lack of clarity there so I'll be delighted to say fair play to them for fixing it. (Still a single reference to Round 3 games for Game 3 using the old language but happy to ignore that like it never happened)

Now now,…..Kerry haven’t lost in Killarney for 28 yrs…some win for mayo….Even us galwegians were impressed……..

Say whatever you like about the provincial championships but they attract more to their games than these group games have done so far (and both have the safety net in place of not knock out games) For example 5,677 was at the Sligo's home game against New York and only half the number for Kildare v Sligo? If Laois v Offaly had been a Leinster match a few thousand instead of what appeared under a thousand would be at that match on Saturday.

In Roscommon v Mayo, Galway v Roscommon, Leitrim v New York, Monaghan v Tyrone,Offaly v Louth, Clare v Cork/Limerick and Armagh v Derry we had plenty of competitive intriguing provincial championship matches and it remains to be seen how many we'll get in the group stage in the All Ireland championship in comparison and will attendance figures improve come round 3 as more should be at stake by then.

If you take the 4 games that were played 3 were somewhat enjoyable and Clare-Donegal was a bit below par.

Looking at the Premier League the weekend before last of the 10 games I would be inclined to call 3 of them enjoyable.

I don't really follow AFL but if looking at this weeks fixtures 4 of the 9 looked to have been close games and ones you could call good.

Preferably its avoidable to get the provincial final mismatches but with a bit of equality in the games you could argue Gaelic Football doesn't measure up badly in comparison.

Round 2 fixtures

Saturday June 3rd

Cork v Kerry - 3pm - GAAGO

Westmeath v Galway 5pm

Tyrone v Armagh 7pm - RTE

Kildare v Dublin 5pm - GAAGO

Sunday June 4th

Mayo v Louth 2pm - RTE

Roscommon v Sligo 3pm - GAAGO

Monaghan v Clare 2pm

Donegal v Derry 4pm - RTE