The 2025 All Ireland Senior Football Championship (Sam Maguire Cup)

How much of that is because Patton was missing?

Id say mentally it is probably hard to get back up to the pitch of the provincial finals for a first round robin game in that space of time.

But all 3 teams were unlucky too, they got very tough draws against v good teams with a point to prove.

Kerry, the 1 provincial winner for whom the final would have taken nothing out of, got the easiest draw of the lot and didn't have to hit any heights to dispatch Roscommon. Although that is no good for them either.

I'd argue that Galway and Donegal will benefit a lot more from their defeats than Kerry will from their win over Roscommon.

Ulster is by far more attritional than the rest, by the end of next weekend Donegal will have played 7 Ulster counties in the championship. All of which qualified for the AI series. The currently weaker ones of Cavan and down have gone to provincial finalists mayo and Clare and won comfortably. Pretty likely that 6 of them will make it through the groups.

wouldn’t say no to some provincial seeding to spread teams around in the groups, but I’m not sure it’s possible to an extent of more than the provincial winner plays teams from other provinces

They might, but if this leads to them playing each other in a preliminary game only one will benefit from it.

Production standards on GAA+ are woeful. How in hell they cannot solve rain on the lens issue is baffling.

Not aware of it disrupting RTE or BBC coverage. Both games I bought yesterday were plagued by it.

Armagh's slightly better odds are justified. If they end up in a preliminary QF they cannot be paired with Donegal, and they would be expected to beat one of the 100/1 teams. Donegal could end up meeting Dublin or Galway and so one of these teams might not reach the QF, so Boylesports giving them a slightly better odds reflects the draw as much as any belief that there is a difference between the teams. If Dublin beat Armagh at the weekend then they are in the QFs and cannot meet Armagh or Galway, so it would then be the usual Dublin and Kerry as favourites.

And yet they are changing the structure of the competition for next year. I don't agree with McGeeney on lot of things, but I agree with him saying changing the structure is madness now. They should leave well enough alone.

Not much between a lot of the sides. And now we have this "jeopardy" that people were saying didn't exist last year.