Malachy Clerkin: Tailteann Cup has retained goodwill, but it might also be confirming need for a third-tier competition
Time now to check in on the
Tailteann Cup
– the football championship's second tier competition and occasional irritant of the one-eyed hurling pundit. We join it at the start of its fourth season and so far it looks like everyone is still aboard. This is not as small a victory as it might appear.
Go back to the founding of the competition and the big fear early on was that John Horan's brainchild might be strangled at birth. The old Tommy Murphy Cup had gone up in smoke through a combination of disinterest and derision and the
GAA
was adamant that the Tailteann Cup had to avoid that fate. Nothing would kill it quicker than the participating counties only half-playing in it.
Four years in and they appear to have got out the gap on that, at least. Run your finger through the squad lists for this weekend and there's no indication that managers have had to go knocking on doors to make up the numbers. The Tommy Murphy days of harassed officials going around clubs trying to dragoon impressionable young lads into playing are long in the past.
Colm Dalton in action for Kildare during the Leinster SFC semi-final defeat to Louth. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho
Take
Kildare
, who for better or worse are the highest profile team involved this time around. They haven't shelled anybody since losing to Louth last month. It's the opposite, if anything – Jimmy Hyland is back from injury for his first championship start since 2022. By and large, that's been the way of it everywhere.
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One reason for this is that the Tailteann Cup has assumed an identity that the Tommy Murphy Cup was never able to get for itself. It's not an afterthought. For the vast majority of the counties involved, it's a fixed and critical part of the annual calendar. Twenty counties have played in the Tailteann Cup over the past four seasons, 14 of them in each iteration. This is their championship.
They've all had their day in it too. Other than New York, who join each year at the preliminary quarter-final stage, every county has posted at least one win in the competition.
Waterford
beat Longford last year, London hammered Offaly. Leitrim won two matches in the 2024 campaign and were unbeaten in regulation play in 2022, only going out to Sligo on penalties.
The fourth Tailteann Cup winners will be crowned in July. Photograph: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
So if nothing else, the Tailteann Cup has established base camp. The concept of a tiered football championship was alien for the first century of the GAA, but it's here now and there's no prospect of it going anywhere. First job completed.
The question is what next. The Tailteann Cup had so much goodwill around it at the start that plenty of people were willing to overlook its flaws. In the spirit of not making perfect the enemy of good, there was more cheerleading than nitpicking. That was fine when the competition was furiously beating its wings trying to get airborne. But it's in a different place now.
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Dean Rock: Jim McGuinness has Donegal motoring and it's hard to see Armagh stopping them in Ulster final
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Eoghan Frayne and Meath out to right some wrongs against Louth in Leinster final
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An obvious issue is the small pool of potential winners. If a championship is only as strong as the teams with a genuine chance of lifting the trophy, the Tailteann Cup has a distance to go yet. The three winners so far were Westmeath (finished third in Division 3 in 2022), Meath (finished sixth in Division 2 in 2023) and Down (finished first in Division 3 in 2024).
Down celebrate after beating Laois in last year's Tailteann Cup final at Croke Park. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Essentially, if you were to rank each team at the end of the respective leagues, the Tailteann Cup was won by the third best team in 2022 and the best team in both '23 and '24. And although two of the three runners-up started the season in Division 4, Cavan were essentially a Division 2 team that had endured a couple of careless leagues by the time 2022 came around.
The top four seeds this time around are Offaly, Kildare, Westmeath and Fermanagh. On a good day, Sligo will be a danger to any one of that quartet, but it feels highly unlikely that the 2025 champions will come from outside those five. Is that sustainable for the other dozen counties? Drill down into the results and you'd have to wonder how much longer they'll want to throw themselves into it with a full heart.
Maybe you take those teams and the top tier of the Tailteann and make that the second tier
There have been 86 Tailteann Cup matches played so far. Of those, 59 have been between teams who started the season in different divisions. Of those, 14 have seen lower division counties beat higher division ones. Division 4 teams have won eight matches against Division 3 teams and four against counties who started in Division 2.
The most common result in three seasons of the Tailteann Cup has been a victory for a Division 3 side over a Division 4 one – it's happened 27 times in 38 games. Are those numbers good? Are they worrying? The sample size is still probably a bit small to be definitive either way. But instinctively it feels like an argument for a third tier.
Brian Byrne celebrates after scoring Laois's third goal in last year's Tailteann Cup semi-final victory against Antrim. Photograph: Tom Maher/Inpho
This is especially true when you sit down and look at how the Sam Maguire is likely to play out. In a wide open race, there are still half a dozen teams who will neither go all the way nor cause much trouble for the counties who have designs on Sam. Maybe you take those teams and the top tier of the Tailteann and make that the second tier, leaving the remaining eight or so to play for a third-tier championship.
It's not an original thought but the case for it is obvious enough in theory. And maybe that's where it should stay – it could well be that the counties involved are only too happy to take their chance every year in tier-two competition and have no desire to be further stratified. Maybe they want to just get on with a very young tournament that they're still only getting used to.
Because what the Tailteann Cup needs most of all is an end to gobshites in the paper checking in and asking how the Tailteann Cup is getting on. It's not there yet (and well done for making it this far). But it's getting there.
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Rennie stepped in, doing what not many referees of that era would have had the bravery to do and physically blocked one of English football's fiercest competitors from his attempts at retaliation. The two players continued mouthing off, and McAteer made a clear book-writing gesture about Keane's much-discussed new autobiography, which had been published the previous day. The Irish midfielder avoided a red card in that instance, but he was still dismissed minutes later for an off-the-ball elbow on McAteer. 'That's a very famous image,' says Ashley Hickson-Lovence, who wrote the 2022 novel 'Your Show,' based on Rennie's life. 'Jason McAteer made a comment about [Roy's] book, and Roy flipped. 'And, you know, that image epitomises Uri. He was a black belt in kickboxing, and he knew martial arts. He wasn't really meant to do that. You're not taught to do that. So that was him doing whatever needed doing to keep the game under control. I don't think the FA were a huge fan. I think there were a few comments that the FA made afterwards, saying that wasn't the best thing to do, or they don't encourage other referees to do that. 'Actually, it was funny because Roy Keane didn't get sent off in that moment. He did get sent off in the game, but he managed to stop Roy Keane attacking Jason McAteer at that point. So that would have been a warning of sorts, to Roy, to behave himself. 'Uri was such a character, and someone who sometimes didn't do things by the book, to do the best that he could as a role of a referee, which is obviously really tough.' While writing 'Your Show,' Hickson-Lovence got to know Rennie, 'a hero' to the young author, who credits the trailblazer for his subsequent stint as an amateur referee. Advertisement The book had started life as the student's PhD at the University of East Anglia. The then-English teacher gained access to Rennie's email address through a friend of a friend, and the ex-referee was initially reluctant about cooperating with the project. Hickson-Lovence needed to 'really sell myself' before Rennie agreed to meet him at the Ponds Forge leisure centre in Sheffield. 'I had to give him a screenshot of my profile as a teacher from the school website and that sort of thing,' he recalls. The pair met up 'four or five times,' and these conversations would help inform the writing of 'Your Show' — a novel that was also a biography of sorts. 'The more we got talking, the more he sort of loosened up, and we warmed to each other, and I listened back to our conversation after his passing, and just listened back to our interviews, and there was a lot of laughter, and that was lovely to hear.' Despite multiple old reports simply describing Rennie as 'English,' Hickson-Lovence discovered he had been born in Jamaica. 'To make that rise from Jamaica to a very rough estate in Sheffield in the '70s, refereeing in the lower leagues, in the semi-professional game in the '80s, in Yorkshire, would have been incredibly tough. And that's something I don't know, because he didn't really talk about it with me, to be honest. And then, to make it to the Premier League in 1997 with increased cameras, scrutiny, Sky Sports, all that sort of thing, it's one hell of an achievement. 'He arrived in Sheffield in 1972, and he qualified as a referee in 1979, and I do think it was a difficult time. 'He lived in a relatively small, modest house with a lot of brothers and sisters. So, especially when he was a young man, sport was his escape. 'I think [his story is] film-worthy, if I do say so myself.' The pair became increasingly close, and as the novel was getting ready for publication, Rennie commended Hickson-Lovence on 'a very good read'. Completing the project was a major coup. Rennie rarely accepted interviews following his retirement. Hickson-Lovence suspects part of this mistrust was due to some of the unkind journalism written about the former referee in his heyday. 'Even when the book was released, I had requests from The Guardian, The Observer and lots of other publications who wanted to do interviews and things about the book together, and he didn't want to do that. And I accepted and respected that decision. 'I would message him to say: 'By the way, so and so wants to do something, I think they're quite trusted,' or whatever. And he would just say: 'Not for me.' Sort of a polite decline.' He continues: 'I think [doing interviews] had to be for a good reason. I suppose he didn't want it to have a sort of journalistic slant or angle. I imagine he wanted it to be a book that had longevity, or would inspire others of colour or marginalised groups to get involved in football and refereeing, particularly. 'But that being said, he didn't really get involved, apart from the interviews. He let me do what I wanted to do.' Rennie refereed over 300 professional games. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Hickson-Lovence and Rennie stayed in touch following the project's conclusion and would regularly message one another. They spoke on the phone for a couple of hours about Rennie's pride following his appointment as the Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University and the 'open-door policy' he planned to have. He was only installed in the position last month. 'He wanted to really break down the barriers in terms of what a university is and what a university should be, and how that relationship would work with the wider Sheffield community.' Rennie, who was also a magistrate in Sheffield since 1996, earlier this year expressed his sympathy after Hickson-Lovence's father passed away. Uri's recent message to me after my dad died. A kind man with a big heart. RIP Uriah Rennie ❤️ — Ashley Hickson-Lovence (@AHicksonLovence) June 9, 2025 During their conversations, it was sometimes notable what was left unsaid. Last April, Rennie told the BBC about how doctors found a nodule on his spine caused by a rare, inoperable neurological condition. The man once described as the Premier League's fittest referee had to learn to walk again. Hickson-Lovence recalls how Rennie didn't mention his illness during their lengthy interactions, and it was only later that he found out the iconic figure had been ill. 'He was quite a private man. And I think he just didn't want to make it all about him, so to speak. 'He was a very selfless man. And all of my interactions with him, it was striking to me how much he cared about other people and the community and putting others first. 'I just think he saw his role as helping others, community and humanity first. And everything he did had to have the right purpose, and if it wasn't going to help anybody, or if it wasn't going to have a lasting impact, or it wasn't going to inspire, then he just wouldn't do it. I'm not just talking about the book. I'm talking about anything he does, because he's a patron of several charities. He goes into schools, he goes into care homes, he's done walking marathons and half marathons. He's done all sorts to raise money for charities. Charities became his thing, and community became his thing. 'It's weird, because I think of Uriah Rennie's legacy now more as a human than actually a referee, having met him and done the research, it feels like he just had such a bigger impact. He had a huge impact on the pitch, but his impact in Sheffield and South Yorkshire cannot be understated, really. 'He knew everybody. And if it was a charity [making a request], he wouldn't say no.' In December 2023, Sam Allison became the Premier League's second-ever black referee, 15 years after Rennie's retirement. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Despite his remarkable achievements, Hickson-Lovence believes Rennie remains a somewhat underappreciated footballing figure. 'I do think the Premier League should have done more to use Uri's legacy to get more officials of colour up through the system. It's not good enough that it was 15 years since his retirement that we had Sam Allison [the Premier League's second black referee], and I still don't think [it's acceptable], considering how culturally diverse the top level game is in the UK, that we don't have more officials of colour, and managers and coaches as well.'
