SAVIOUR…If it wasn’t for Ulster…

LAST weekend’s results left us with a mouth-watering Ulster final a week on Sunday. Let me begin by saying that without the competitive nature of our provincial competition, this season the Championship as a whole would be something of a damp squib.

Leaving Ulster aside, every other game in every other province wasn’t worth the admission fee or, indeed, the TV licence fee to watch them.

Surely the penny has now dropped with the GAA that the time has arrived for a radical overhaul of the structure of our football championships.

I wrote here a few weeks back before the Championship started that it was time to bin the provincial championships, this year’s games and the lack of competitiveness in the nearly all of those games only strengthens that argument.

Kerry and Dublin have waltzed through their provinces without coming out of second gear and Mayo were beaten simply because they chose to gear their training to be ready for the All-Ireland series and they didn’t mind too much if they lost their provincial crown in the process.

Ulster is the only province that has served up decent contests and as a result it is the main focus of this year’s Championship, which is great for us.

After the two draws there was an air of excitement surrounding the replays. Donegal edged out Monaghan and over the two games you would have to agree that Donegal were deserving winners.

I said here last week that Monaghan disappointed me and they did little last Saturday to ease that disappointment. I felt they lacked a clear plan of how they were to approach the game. For long periods they left Conor McManus completely isolated and the runners from deep that we have usually associate with this Monaghan team were none existent.

Perhaps like Mayo they have one eye on doing better later in the All-Ireland series but given the teams that are in the back door this could prove a risky strategy.

Donegal were the better team and they did fair better over the two games than I expected they would.

They have serious pace going forward and will cause most teams problems when they attack but they are leaking a little to much at the back. Donegal will need to tighten up in a few areas before the final but they will have had two weeks to look at that before the final swings around but for now they will just be satisfied that they have reached their sixth final on the bounce, which is an incredible achievement.

Tyrone did what I expected them to do in that they carefully dissected Cavan’s performance the first day out and simply went to town on them. Like Donegal they are lethal going forward but they are shipping a lot of scores at the back. They looked like the real deal but if you take a step back you will agree that Cavan afforded them way to much room which in turn led to Tyrone being able to over run them.

We now have a cracking final in store with the two form teams in Ulster about to clash for the ultimate prize. Tyrone will carry that hurt and hunger of not being at the top table in Ulster for the last six years. Donegal will carry that desire to prove all doubters wrong and show that they still have it in the tank so roll on the 17th of July.

This week we said our goodbyes to one of the GAA’s real good guys. Séamus Mac Géidigh the RNAG sports commentator was laid to rest and his sudden passing rocked the GAA to the core.

For any of you lucky enough to have met Séamus you will know that he was one of a kind. When I used to play for the county I would do a post match interview with Séamus after nearly every game.

Some days as a player you might have had a bad game and you would just want to get back to the sanctuary of the dressing room but once you would see Séamus and his heart-warming smile it quickly would put things into perspective and you would gladly stop off for a chat

After my fall out from the county set up I worked along side Séamus covering games and one evening travelling to cover an International Rules match together he gave me one of the nicest talks anyone in my life has ever given me and we shared a few laughs about the whole situation.

He was a real gentleman and that conversation we shared will stick with me for the rest of my life.
Séamus will be greatly missed on our airways and in press boxes up and down the land. Ar dheis Dé go raibh anam uasal.
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