One of the click bait driven websites ran a story this morning in which the opening line was “Things are falling apart down in Kerry”. They hardly are. The only certainties in life are death, taxes and Kerry winning All Irelands.
Reference was being made to the fact that two more Kingdom starlets, Daniel Kirby – son of former midfielder William – and Eddie Boyle have become the latest to be pilfered by the greedy Australians.
They call it “The Irish Experiment” – a bit like when World War II was called exactly that. Except, of course, in Ireland, where we called it The Emergency. Thank you Ronnie Drew for that gem of a one liner! Similarly, the ‘Irish Experiment’ is more like a segregation of the best talent in the game with not a grain of thought given to the damage the policy is doing to all the teams that are left behind without the talented players they are shorn of.
What that, in turn does, is absolutely magnify the necessity of getting every last crumb out of the resources a team has at their disposal. Which, I think, any fair appraisal would note, Robbie Brennan has more than done with Meath over the past two seasons.
However, the problem, if one was to title it thus, with that being the case is expectations rise and with them comes ever increasing pressure. I’d have thought that propelling the lads back to Div. 1 football would have been more than enough to secure Robbie and his entourage any length of extension they wanted. As was rightly the case when Andy McEntee achieved the same feat in 2019.
Though there’s been no official word of such things yet, but, the bigger picture would appear to suggest that things are afoot in that direction.
Through what I think has been described as a Player Pathway. Going from the club championship to the Regional Championship and then, for those considered to have “Made it” on into the county setup. Whether that be the ‘actual’ panel or the Development Squad with John McCarthy and co.
With that in mind, I will say that it was a surprise and something of a worry to learn that the format of the Regional Football Championships has been upskuttled beyond recognition.
Being slashed from eight teams down to four and, even more disappointingly, the addition of the senior clubs to the mix. The above adjective was deliberately chosen because – no matter how much anybody might protest to the contrary – it stands to reason that there’s a greater danger of players from smaller or less prominent clubs being overlooked.
As it is, there are at least two players who should have been part of the Meath panel in 2026. After all, the Mission Statement, per se, of the Regional Championship when it was instigated during Colm O’Rourke’s tenure was to cast the net as wide as possible to give as many players as possible who wished to the opportunity to play for Meath at the highest level.
It did so too. As players such as Michael Flood, Harry O’Higgins, Danny Dixon, Diarmuid Moriarity and Keith Curtis all grabbed their chances at advancement.
But then, it’s also well known that there were an element who couldn’t wait for the formerly bespeckled one to be gone.
Even putting the situation with the Meath Regional Championship aside however, the GAA is at risk of being, if not already partially, destroyed by a counterproductive obsession with messing with matters. Such as:
(a): The ghastly Split Season. The sooner it and those who came up with it are kicked to touch, the better.
(b): Doing away with replays – aside from the reality that it smacks of eaten bread being soon forgotten and biting the hand the feeds you, extra time and penaltues are an inhumane way of deciding anything.
(c): Taking the All Ireland Minor Finals out of Croke Park but putting Sigerson and Fitzgibbon equivalents in there. Why?
(d): Football matches being over the minute the hooter goes instead of waiting until the ball goes dead.
(e): National League and even Provincial Championship titles being rendered seemingly meaningless when it comes to the selection of the All Star teams at the end of the year.
As has often been said in this space previously, change for change’s sake is not only useless, it can actually have the complete opposite to desired effect.
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