Cork and Kerry were not among counties who sought an earlier All-Ireland SFC first round draw.<\/p>\n
The 16 counties in this year\u2019s Sam Maguire Cup learned their fate on Monday. Half of them will compete in the four provincial finals over the next two weekends.<\/p>\n
For a variety of reasons such as accommodation and players\u2019 work schedules, some counties had expressed a preference for this year\u2019s opening round draw being staged prior to the provincial finals.<\/p>\n
The Munster finalists were not among them, however. Kerry chairman Patrick O\u2019Sullivan confirmed they did not request the event take place prior to Sunday\u2019s showdown with Cork in Fitzgerald Stadium but said there were pluses and minuses to the draw\u2019s scheduling.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can look at it both ways,\u201d said O\u2019Sullivan. \u201cIt\u2019s good to know who you\u2019re playing and to be organised for it. You know the type of team you\u2019re playing down the line, the fellas you will have back and the fellas you\u2019ll be trying to get back.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the same time, Kerry and Donegal is a massive draw two weeks after what is a big Munster final against Cork at home, the first without crowd restrictions in nearly 10 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe draw was a bit of a distraction. If it were a lesser county, would it be as much of an issue, I wonder. But that\u2019s how it has happened.\u201d Reacting to the draw, Kerry manager Jack O\u2019Connor on Monday questioned the timing of it ahead of their date with Cork. Describing it as \u201ca disconnect\u201d, he said: \u201cI think it just probably takes from the provincial final, to be honest. Munster Council this week will be trying to promote the Munster final and then you have this draw, which will get people talking about the All-Ireland series.\u201d Meanwhile, a printing error was the reason behind Leitrim\u2019s name appearing on Mayo\u2019s when the county was pulled out in Monday\u2019s All-Ireland SFC Round 1 draw.<\/p>\n
After Monaghan as provincial finalists were drawn by Central Competitions Control Committee chairman Brian Carroll, GAA director general Tom Ryan revealed from the league qualifiers bowl that Mayo would be their opponents at the end of the month.<\/p>\n
While Maigh Eo and the county crest were clearly distinguishable, Leitrim was printed in smaller font on the piece of paper. The small discrepancy was due to an inaccurate original file used when printing off the list of counties. The mistake did not impact the draw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cork and Kerry were not among counties who sought an earlier All-Ireland SFC first round draw. The 16…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[177329,2110,6937,1964,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-433754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-championship-2026","tag-cork-sport","tag-kerry-gaa","tag-cork-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}