Ulster Championship draw to be held on Tuesday

THE draw for the 2021 Ulster Senior Football Championship will take place on Tuesday evening. It will be held on the 6.01 News on RTÉ1 with two bowls in operation.

Bowl one will contain Antrim, Armagh, Donegal, Down and Fermanagh – the five counties who have not been involved in the Ulster Championship preliminary round over the last two seasons.

Two teams from that bowl will be drawn together and they will meet in the first game of this year’s provincial championship.

After that, the four teams from bowl two – Cavan, Derry, Monaghan and Tyrone – will be added to the three teams remaining in bowl one. The next team drawn will face the preliminary round victors in a quarter-final tie. The remaining six counties will then be drawn to make up the final quarter-final encounters.

Last week’s revised GAA fixture calendar provided some clarity on when the ties would take place.

Provincial championships are due to commence on the weekend of June 26/27 with the Ulster final scheduled for the weekend of July 31/August 1.

The GAA also confirmed that the All-Ireland Football Championship would work on a knock-out basis for the second season in-a-row.

As revealed by Gaelic Life earlier this year, the Ulster Senior Hurling Championship will almost certainly not be returning this season. It was last played in 2017 and shelved for a three-year period before being re-examined. The third year of that period looks set to be extended to 2021 due to last season’s Covid interruptions.