After more than a month without a competitive fixture, the county’s footballers and their supporters are now counting down the days to Mayo’s All-Ireland football championship Round 1 clash against Monaghan at St Tiernach’s Park in Clones this coming Sunday.
All the provincial final ballyhoo notwithstanding, the weekend just gone really felt like the moment when this year’s championship got underway in earnest. The blood (literally) and thunder contest in Killarney between Kerry and Donegal felt like a proper championship clash, the outcome of which had material consequences for both counties.
Only a few weeks ago, Kerry were – all those injuries notwithstanding – humming along nicely. Roscommon were on top of the world too. But now they’re both in last chance saloon, with every game they play from now on this summer – which may only be the next one – a knockout fixture.
Already, it looks as if the new championship format is an improvement on what went before. Group stage matches never had the all-or-nothing element that championship fixtures demand but, as the weekend just gone showed, every game under the new format has that feature in spades.
The wins recorded by Donegal and Tyrone at the weekend – where both of them got the better of provincial champions – showed that it’s possible to regroup to effect after a provincial setback. Meath, surprise losers to Westmeath in Leinster, weren’t, however, able to overcome Munster finalists Cork, while Galway, who lost the Connacht final to Roscommon, had no trouble in accounting for the limp challenge offered by Kildare.
This coming weekend it’s our turn to join the party, following a five-week gap since the Connacht semi-final defeat to Roscommon. We’re coming into the game pretty much as an unknown quantity, as we’ve no idea how we’re going to line out and we haven’t a clue either if the failures that were so clearly on show against the Rossies will be a factor again in Clones.
To be honest, we’ll be none the wiser about any of this until we get to St Tiernach’s Park on Sunday and see how the lads react when Monaghan start to turn the screw. And they will, you know.
Supporters are as downbeat as I can recall as we head into this game, arguably with justification given the team’s meltdown against the Rossies, but we’ve got to be able to give a better account of ourselves in this one, haven’t we? We’ll get the answer to that on Sunday.
If you are heading to Clones for the game and you’re also a season ticket holder then don’t forget that the deadline for getting your match ticket via your season ticket account is 11am tomorrow. I haven’t got mine yet either but it’s on the to-do list for later this evening.
Also later this evening we’ll be recording the first of two podcast shows we’ll have for club members ahead of the game this week. This evening’s pod will set the scene for Sunday and it’ll be online either later tonight or first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll be recording the second one closer to the weekend once the match day panel has been announced so that one’s likely to be released on Friday.
We’ll also have a column for our club members during the week, which Mike is down to do on this occasion. He had a frontline seat both in Killarney and at Dr Hyde Park last weekend, as he was commentating for GAA+ on both games, so his column this week should make for interesting reading.
There’ll be plenty more here on MFT as well as match day draws closer. After what has felt like an eternity sitting on the outside looking in, it’ll be great to be back in the midst of the action once again on Sunday. Proper championship action too.