Get ready for a glorious summer as revitalised football is box-office again

Extra.ie​

06-05-2025

We knew Jim Gavin was good, but save-the-provincial-football-system good? Easy now. We're coming off the back of a Bank Holiday weekend, the weather has been smashing, and the holiday vibes are starting to thrum, but let's not get crazy here.
The work done by Gavin's Football Review Committee gets more impressive by the week, in its thoroughness, its far-sightedness and its thrilling practical application.
Even the obvious wrinkles, like the proviso that an opposition touch turns a two-point shot into a one-point score, which caused some controversy in the midst of the barn-burner in Castlebar on Sunday, is the sort of dynamic talking point that couldn't have been imagined a year ago. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
Summer after summer, we bemoaned the lopsided provincial system that saw Dublin and Kerry reduce Leinster and Munster to the status of training pitches, and the 2025 championship has seen that talk squeezed for space.
That's largely thanks to Meath stunning Dublin a fortnight ago, but also because of the changes wrought by the FRC.
They are what is making football seem vital, though, not any reboot for the provincial format.
No, not even Jim Gavin is that good.
Because let's get down to brass tacks: if Dublin had done what everyone in the capital and most people in Meath had expected and won that Leinster semi-final, then we would have been left with the usual summer serving of stodgy non-events in Munster and Leinster, loudly championed pyrotechnics in Ulster, and the reliable simmering of the deep-burning Mayo-Galway rivalry in Connacht. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
One shock can't save a system, seismic as Meath's win felt.
And for all the novelty of Sunday's Leinster decider between Louth and Meath, few expect the old order to be so decisively overturned that Dublin will struggle to get back to a Leinster final next year.
No, all hasn't changed, utterly or otherwise. What has changed is how the game is played, and that was a decisive contributor to the glorious Connacht final, the game of the year so far.
The two-point rule, such an issue of contention throughout the league, displeases many coaches and a handful of pundits, but it is an agent of abrupt change that is proving exhilarating.
Paul Conroy struck three beauties from distance to wipe out Mayo's fiery start in Castlebar all on his own, before a couple from Mayo on the resumption reeled Galway in. Pic: INPHO/James Crombie
And it was Mayo's failure to engineer a clear shooting chance from outside the 40m arc in the end-game that cost them. Few would have faith in any of their shooters beyond Ryan O'Donoghue being able to land a pressure shot like that, and when Matthew Ruane eventually took it on in MacHale Park, he was too wide to the right and he was falling prey to the familiar panic that seizes Mayo attackers in these instances.
The county's besetting failure to show composure in clutch moments had struck again.
But the drama wouldn't have been possible without the two-point reward for long-distance scoring. That, rather than any miraculous revival of the provincial brand, is what makes the old game feel so vital today.
This, remember, is the time of the year when we are all supposed to be clasping hands and looking upwards, offering hosannas for hurling. The May Bank Holiday has become the time of the year when hurling hype hits overdrive, but football is now rivalling it.
Again, that is down to how the game is played and not how the competition is formatted. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
That point bears repeating because there has been some very loose talk since Sunday of a provincial revival, as if the years of turkey shoots have somehow, by divine writ, been consigned to the past.
But let's not forget that the warm-up action ahead of Sunday's Connacht final was a saunter around Fitzgerald Stadium for Kerry against Clare; it was Kerry's twelfth Munster championship title in 13 years.
And remember that a dodgy Dublin still suffered no great difficulty in getting past Wicklow, just as off-colour Mayo were spooked but not stunned by Sligo and then Leitrim.
The point is that football has felt revitalised this summer in spite of the system, rather than because of it.
And a point Gavin made at his very first address as FRC chairman in April of last year bears remembering, too. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
It was the day after a brilliant league final between Derry and Dublin, which the Ulster team won on penalties.
Gavin said the match was a reminder that, when sides are reasonably evenly matched, excitement usually follows.
'I'm involved in underage football in the county (Dublin) and whatever league you are at, teams are playing at a competitive level and the games are exciting and competitive,' he said.
'It's when you get the mismatches that, sometimes from a spectator perspective and indeed from a player experience, that it might not be what we want.'
Picture this: football could be even better in a future where the season is so altered that the old, unwieldy and dysfunctional provincial system is removed, and replaced with a more competitive and efficient way.
It's eminently doable but the will to make it happen either doesn't exist among the leadership of the GAA, or it pulses so weakly that it can't overcome the significant and understandable provincial resistance.
There will be a new All-Ireland series from next year, replacing the round-robin that has pleased practically no one, but fundamental change is being resisted.
And as long as that happens, then football won't reach its full potential. Until then, though, there is at least the consolation of matches like the Connacht decider, and Saturday's Ulster final to savour, too.
The Leinster decider will have novelty as one selling point, but more fundamentally it will pitch two very evenly matched sides into competition, just the sort of mixture Gavin identified as being ideal for decent football.
Maybe it's greedy to want all the change now, but after glimpsing what's possible, it would be mad not to want more.
'How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?' was a popular song in the US after World War One.
It spoke to the real fear that soldiers wouldn't want to return to lowly agricultural jobs in America after seeing the delights of Europe while on service.
We've had a glimpse of Paree thanks to Jim Gavin and his FRC, and life on the farm doesn't cut it any longer. We can't forget the glamour, the dazzle, the sheer excitement of this world few of us dared to believe possible.
And we can't stop thinking about how better it could get, too.