High-wire drama suggests group stages are worthwhile

As race for Sam begins in earnest, last season’s campaign points to plenty of twists in the weeks ahead

In time, the 2023 All-Ireland senior football championship will become known as ‘The Great Experiment’. The time when the GAA divorced itself from so much of its tradition and where sacred cows such as September finals were culled in the name of the greater good.

Penalty shoot-outs, decried as ‘not part of the game’, were written in as a near fact of life.

There was simultaneously an explosion of games and a condensing of time, throwing the championship into an entirely new and unfamiliar rhythm.

That was to be expected. As with many GAA decisions, the newly-adopted format was a series of compromises that tries to be all things to all men.

League form was linked to championship while attempts were made to retain the provinces as we know them.

But for many, the obvious flaw came in the round-robin series – or the All-Ireland SFC (group stage) as it is officially known.

The problem was there for all to see. Three teams progressing from a fourteam group. Championship in its most forgiving form.

Valid

“Odd,” as Dublin’s Paul Mannion put it this week. “You don’t see it in other sports.”

The GAA had valid reasons to go down that road.

The Super 8s (remember them?) saw two teams progress from groups of four but meant dead rubbers were likely and slowed the championship’s pace when it should have been building a head of steam.

The GAA’s logic was sound. By allowing three teams to progress in the new format, every game should have meaning.

But going into last year’s group stages, the die looked cast, the odd one out in each group looked obvious. The round-robin stage looked like it would be much ado about not a whole lot.

Sligo started the year in the basement division but needed only victories over London and New York to give them entry to the All-Ireland championship.

Westmeath got in on the back of their Tailteann Cup win in 2022 but didn’t get out of Division 3, form that didn’t look like enough to emerge from a group containing Galway, Armagh and Tyrone.

Louth had made progress but had taken a shellacking against Dublin in the Leinster final and were up against it with Kerry, Cork and Mayo, while in Group 4, Clare, relegated from Division 2, had ground to make up on Derry , Donegal and Monaghan. As it happened, those were the four teams (Sligo,Westmeath, Louth and Clare) that failed to progress, but it wasn’t uneventful.

Each of those teams could point to good moments or games. And the concluding day came down to tiny margins as four placed balls helped shape the championship in a finale that would have befitted the famously fast-paced NFL Red Zone Sunday night.

Shane Walsh had a chance to see Galway draw with Armagh and top the group but his effort dropped short.

Kevin Feely caught and converted a mark to give Kildare home advantage in their preliminary quarter-final( they played Monaghan in O’Connor Park, Tullamore due to the rebuild of St Conleth’s Park, Newbridge) and send Roscommon on the road to face Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

John Heslin might have capped encouraging group-stage from Westmeath had he converted his late free which would have seen the midlanders defeat Tyrone. However, his effort went wide and a draw was enough for Tyrone to survive.

Aidan O’Shea didn’t know it at the time – he would have needed a calculator – but had he converted a late free against Cork he would have given Mayo home advantage in their quarter-final through score difference.

It was a dramatic finish to the group stages that were expected to be a procession, a part of the championship that delivered much more than its billing.

At an end-of-season review, RTÉ ana

lyst Enda McGinley picked that final-day drama as his moment of the season.

How 2023, the first iteration, informs 2024 and teams’ approach to the group stages remains to be seen.

The action gets under way this weekend and the teams likely to miss out on progression are, it could be argued, are less obvious than last year.

While the sample size is tiny, last year suggests home advantage in preliminary quarter-finals is of little significance. Only Cork won their home game.

But what was crystalised was the advantage that comes with topping your group and securing an extra week’s rest.

Three of the four teams that finished first progressed to the All-Ireland semi-finals, with Armagh’s defeat on penalties to Monaghan the exception.

The hectic schedule, no doubt, played its part for teams sent the long way. If there was a lesson to be learned perhaps it’s that playing high-wire championship football on back-to-back weekends will catch up with you eventually.

This weekend we go again. It would seem unlikely we’d have more last-gasp, placed-ball drama but, at the very least, the group stages have earned themselves another chance. The Great Experiment will get another airing.