THIS IS THE championship’s adaptation of High Road, Low Road.
Sixteen teams head out this weekend, eight for Dublin airport with overnight bags packed for a weekend break with return tickets slipped inside their pockets, while eight more head for the Cliffs of Moher with nothing more than a survival pack, a date with a paragliding instructor and a farewell note posted to their nearest and dearest lest they not see dry land again.
For all the inevitable confusion that accompanied the championship’s new way, this is where clarity dawns.
Eight teams with a second chance and eight on their last.
Despite having being weaned off sudden death ball for quarter of a century, old preferences die hard. Most neutral eyeballs this weekend will be drawn not to those luxuriating by the pool where the menu is a trip to the Big House or have another shot at it, but to those plunged into choppier waters with the stark choice of sink or swim.
The difference with RTÉ’s quirky travel show is that those facing the prospect of wallowing in a jacuzzi or being wedged inside the jaws of a big fish have not been left to chance.
Instead, this is the reward for Round 2A in winning and price for losing in Round 2B.
It is fitting that it was an Irish man – Iain Dowie in his stint as Crystal Palace manager back when success at Selhurst Park could only ever be measured by resilience – who came up with the term ‘bouncebackability’, because when 2B is distilled down to its core ingredient, that pretty much is what it is all about.
Of course, other elements feed into that, not least tradition, depth, class and belief, which is why some manage it a lot better than others.
In losing to Louth last time out, Dublin lost back-to-back championship games in the same season for the first time ever.
Mind, it is a measure of where they are coming from that it is not a question that they have been grilled on too many times since the introduction of football’s backdoor in 2001, failing on just the fifth time of asking.
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Inevitably, that leaves just Kerry as the only county to have never lost back-to-back games in the same season, a jeopardy they will face for the seventh time in Newbridge on Saturday evening.
All of that might go some way to explaining why both Cavan and Kildare may look more than a little ashen-faced as they stand on the cliff edge, but no such potent sense of fatalism is likely to be evident in either Celtic Park or Clones.
For some, not least Meath and Roscommon, that they are facing this level of jeopardy this quickly will surely test their nerves.
That is particularly true of Meath. If last year’s explosion from being a mid-ranking Division 2 team to a slayer of giants – Dublin, Kerry and Galway – was the unexpected storyline of the year, this summer has matched it, but with a narrative as inverted as it has been regressive.
Having secured promotion (taking down Derry and Tyrone in the process) by winning Division 2 they were pretty much everyone’s favourites to win a first Leinster title in 16 years, yet they are two and out against Westmeath and Cork thus far.
Outside what they had achieved results-wise in Robbie Brennan’s second season, there was compelling evidence that they were evolving a squad with the kind of genuine depth to be considered a top six team, the return of Sean Brennan between the posts and the game-changing options which the likes of Jack Flynn and Jack O’Connor have offered from the bench reaffirming that.
Which begs the question of where has this dip come from? Is it merely the laws of football gravity applying itself, a team that went so high so quickly could only drop like a stone and not a feather?
Those seeking to prosecute that argument might point to last year’s semi-final wipe-out against Donegal as evidence of such, but there was a far more relevant comparison with Jim McGuinness’ team less than three weeks ago which revealed how much Meath needs to mature.
Meath manager Robbie Brennan. Tom O'Hanlon / INPHO
Tom O'Hanlon / INPHO / INPHO
On the same afternoon that Donegal offered up a masterclass on how to play with an extra man against the All-Ireland champions, Meath showed how you can make a mess of things while having the same advantage.
There were 20 minutes left and they trailed Cork by two points when Colm O’Callaghan’s red card handed them the lifeline which in the new game should be defining and decisive when all else is equal.
After all, it means you are guaranteed an 11 v 10 when both attacking and defending.
In Páirc Ui Rinn that evening you would have hardly thought so. Where Donegal were methodical and forensic, Meath were manic and fitful, rushing their attacks, kicking three late wides and dropping another short from attempts forced rather than framed with purpose.
A late line ball which was an invite to recycle was instead sent goalwards on a wing and a prayer, which is just how Cork wanted it sent.
Without the ball, they were even worse. Steven Sherlock’s fourth two-pointer – utterly sublime in its execution – clinched the game, but Meath’s extra man was playing as a sweeper inside the zone rather than being deployed to ensure that Cork’s most dangerous forward was not invited the opportunity to shoot at the posts.
All of that is less a coaching failure than a smarts one; a team that has been hardened into winning tight games know when to cool it with the ball and when to ratchet it up when without it, and in that final quarter Meath looked like a team still with a lot of the learning curve left to travel.
Derry, even though a pale shadow of the force they were in their Rory Gallagher pomp, have most certainly travelled that curve, which makes Meath’s trip up the road feel particularly perilous.
Derry had a chastening evening against Armagh in the last round. Nick Elliott / INPHO
Nick Elliott / INPHO / INPHO
Meanwhile, Roscommon head to injury-weakened Monaghan, but it is more history than the here and now which they are burdened by.
They have been dogged by the ‘yo-yo’ tag, primarily for their ability to flip-flop from division to division quicker than a Keir Starmer policy U-turn, but the reality is much worse than that.
Of the eight that head out in Round 2B this weekend, they are by a distance the worst when measured on the bouncebackability tape.
On the 21 occasions they have faced losing back to back games in the same summer, they have bent the knee and succumbed to that fate on 14 occasions, which includes losing three games on the bounce in the 2018 Super 8s and (Connacht semi-final included) in 2024.
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Roscommon manager Mark Dowd after the defeat to Tyrone. James Lawlor / INPHO
James Lawlor / INPHO / INPHO
That’s the history, but the here and now is cheerier. They have lit up this summer with the kind of exhilarating football that will not win an All-Ireland (look away if Donegal get their claws into them) but they are building something that has a bright future.
They could just as easily (and most likely should have) beaten Tyrone as lost to them, with a rare Conor Carroll mis-step proving the difference.
That result felt anything but defining.
And if any team is built to stand at the cliff edge and trust the wind to take them where they want to go, then it is surely them.
And that place?
Never mind High Road, Low Road, because now it is all about more road or no road.
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Crunch Time - Dublin, Meath and Roscommon enter defining weekend
THIS IS THE championship’s adaptation of High Road, Low Road.
Sixteen teams head out this weekend, eight for Dublin airport with overnight bags packed for a weekend break with return tickets slipped inside their pockets, while eight more head for the Cliffs of Moher with nothing more than a survival pack, a date with a paragliding instructor and a farewell note posted to their nearest and dearest lest they not see dry land again.
Eight teams with a second chance and eight on their last.
Despite having being weaned off sudden death ball for quarter of a century, old preferences die hard. Most neutral eyeballs this weekend will be drawn not to those luxuriating by the pool where the menu is a trip to the Big House or have another shot at it, but to those plunged into choppier waters with the stark choice of sink or swim.
The difference with RTÉ’s quirky travel show is that those facing the prospect of wallowing in a jacuzzi or being wedged inside the jaws of a big fish have not been left to chance.
Instead, this is the reward for Round 2A in winning and price for losing in Round 2B.
It is fitting that it was an Irish man – Iain Dowie in his stint as Crystal Palace manager back when success at Selhurst Park could only ever be measured by resilience – who came up with the term ‘bouncebackability’, because when 2B is distilled down to its core ingredient, that pretty much is what it is all about.
Of course, other elements feed into that, not least tradition, depth, class and belief, which is why some manage it a lot better than others.
In losing to Louth last time out, Dublin lost back-to-back championship games in the same season for the first time ever.
Mind, it is a measure of where they are coming from that it is not a question that they have been grilled on too many times since the introduction of football’s backdoor in 2001, failing on just the fifth time of asking.
Inevitably, that leaves just Kerry as the only county to have never lost back-to-back games in the same season, a jeopardy they will face for the seventh time in Newbridge on Saturday evening.
All of that might go some way to explaining why both Cavan and Kildare may look more than a little ashen-faced as they stand on the cliff edge, but no such potent sense of fatalism is likely to be evident in either Celtic Park or Clones.
For some, not least Meath and Roscommon, that they are facing this level of jeopardy this quickly will surely test their nerves.
That is particularly true of Meath. If last year’s explosion from being a mid-ranking Division 2 team to a slayer of giants – Dublin, Kerry and Galway – was the unexpected storyline of the year, this summer has matched it, but with a narrative as inverted as it has been regressive.
Having secured promotion (taking down Derry and Tyrone in the process) by winning Division 2 they were pretty much everyone’s favourites to win a first Leinster title in 16 years, yet they are two and out against Westmeath and Cork thus far.
Outside what they had achieved results-wise in Robbie Brennan’s second season, there was compelling evidence that they were evolving a squad with the kind of genuine depth to be considered a top six team, the return of Sean Brennan between the posts and the game-changing options which the likes of Jack Flynn and Jack O’Connor have offered from the bench reaffirming that.
Which begs the question of where has this dip come from? Is it merely the laws of football gravity applying itself, a team that went so high so quickly could only drop like a stone and not a feather?
Those seeking to prosecute that argument might point to last year’s semi-final wipe-out against Donegal as evidence of such, but there was a far more relevant comparison with Jim McGuinness’ team less than three weeks ago which revealed how much Meath needs to mature.
On the same afternoon that Donegal offered up a masterclass on how to play with an extra man against the All-Ireland champions, Meath showed how you can make a mess of things while having the same advantage.
There were 20 minutes left and they trailed Cork by two points when Colm O’Callaghan’s red card handed them the lifeline which in the new game should be defining and decisive when all else is equal.
After all, it means you are guaranteed an 11 v 10 when both attacking and defending.
In Páirc Ui Rinn that evening you would have hardly thought so. Where Donegal were methodical and forensic, Meath were manic and fitful, rushing their attacks, kicking three late wides and dropping another short from attempts forced rather than framed with purpose.
A late line ball which was an invite to recycle was instead sent goalwards on a wing and a prayer, which is just how Cork wanted it sent.
Without the ball, they were even worse. Steven Sherlock’s fourth two-pointer – utterly sublime in its execution – clinched the game, but Meath’s extra man was playing as a sweeper inside the zone rather than being deployed to ensure that Cork’s most dangerous forward was not invited the opportunity to shoot at the posts.
All of that is less a coaching failure than a smarts one; a team that has been hardened into winning tight games know when to cool it with the ball and when to ratchet it up when without it, and in that final quarter Meath looked like a team still with a lot of the learning curve left to travel.
Derry, even though a pale shadow of the force they were in their Rory Gallagher pomp, have most certainly travelled that curve, which makes Meath’s trip up the road feel particularly perilous.
Meanwhile, Roscommon head to injury-weakened Monaghan, but it is more history than the here and now which they are burdened by.
They have been dogged by the ‘yo-yo’ tag, primarily for their ability to flip-flop from division to division quicker than a Keir Starmer policy U-turn, but the reality is much worse than that.
Of the eight that head out in Round 2B this weekend, they are by a distance the worst when measured on the bouncebackability tape.
On the 21 occasions they have faced losing back to back games in the same summer, they have bent the knee and succumbed to that fate on 14 occasions, which includes losing three games on the bounce in the 2018 Super 8s and (Connacht semi-final included) in 2024.
That’s the history, but the here and now is cheerier. They have lit up this summer with the kind of exhilarating football that will not win an All-Ireland (look away if Donegal get their claws into them) but they are building something that has a bright future.
They could just as easily (and most likely should have) beaten Tyrone as lost to them, with a rare Conor Carroll mis-step proving the difference.
That result felt anything but defining.
And if any team is built to stand at the cliff edge and trust the wind to take them where they want to go, then it is surely them.
And that place?
Never mind High Road, Low Road, because now it is all about more road or no road.
*****
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All in GAA jeopardy Last Chance Saloon ROUND 2B