WHAT IS IT they say about clichés? They’re only clichés because they are true?
Cut now to The Sunday Game, and the host Jacqui Hurley purring about that day’s feature game, indeed the only game of football intercounty action between Monaghan and Tyrone.
Looking Colm Cooper straight in the eye, she makes the point; “We said it before, the Ulster championship, of all the provincial championships, it’s the one that just gives us these moments, time and time again.”
Gooch found himself swept up in the sentiment. He wasn’t looking for balloons and holding pins.
“Yeah, it just keeps on giving and it is impossible to predict,” he began.
“Tyrone… Omagh… Tyrone coming back after finding their mojo halfway through the league, we thought they would be difficult to turn over.
“But, Monaghan, we thought they were going to be relegated halfway through the league. They turned that around, they survived again.
“They just have huge belief in the Ulster championship.”
Then it was the turn of Enda McGinley to contribute. Wearing jeans and a suit jacket and looking for all the world like a young Jeremy Clarkson, he shared an anecdote about meeting Peter Harte at the Tyrone training centre in Garvaghy on Saturday morning.
Naturally, the chat turned to Monaghan and the approach of Tyrone and Harte, to which McGinley relayed Harte’s views, “Well look, it’s still Monaghan. It’s a big game, you want to go and win. But it was as much ‘look, let’s go and have a cut. You don’t want to lose to Monaghan, but it wasn’t the end of the world.”
So there you have it. We love the entertainment of Ulster, but on the assembly line where they are putting the sausage together, a lack of motivation might be seeping in.
As a pure spectacle, Sunday’s game had that magical quality where shapes, formations and tactics are disregarded because the action is so fast, so random, that minds are scrambled.
For further reading, please see Donegal-Kildare 2011, Armagh-Roscommon in Portlaoise in 2018, or a good deal of the games in which Mayo brought Dublin through the spin cycle, only for themselves to end up on the wrong side of the result.
It doesn’t happen that often, but it is in these moments when you see character over-riding strategy.
Take a look back at the 1994 Celtic Park game between Derry as defending All-Ireland champions, and Down.
Over the 00’s decade, that game became hailed as one of the finest games ever.
The Covid Lockdown meant that when people had the time and space to actually watch that game, screened by the GAA, it wasn’t that flattering. Balls were kicked along the floor. Catches were missed and dangerous fouls went unpunished. Not all of the finishing was from the top drawer.
But what cannot be disputed was the sheer ferocity with which every single ball was contested. Unlike Peter Harte sizing up the prospect of winning or losing to Monaghan with the All-Ireland campaign to follow, there was no tomorrow.
Occasionally, you can get these games in Ulster. Even the scoreline, 2-17 to 1-18 had one thinking that perhaps it broke an overall scoring record.
Not so. Only in 2021, a 2-25 to 1-12 walloping for Down from Donegal topped that figure.
Two years previous, Tyrone ran up 2-23 to 2-9 against Antrim.
The preliminary round of 2018? Donegal 2-20 to Cavan’s 1-15.
But there’s always been a willingness to try styles too, and not care for the aesthetics involved that has made Ulster compelling.
In that year when Donegal were cooking up a storm in Declan Bonner’s first, free-wheeling season (2-20 v Cavan, 2-16 v Derry, 2-22 v Down) they faced Fermanagh in the final.
Bonner had succeeded Rory Gallagher and the narrative was that Donegal were glad to see the handbrake lowered.
Gallagher went to Fermanagh. They reached the Ulster final but in their three games (0-12 v Armagh, 1-8 v Monaghan, 0-12 v Donegal) they recorded scores that wouldn’t have won any of the other games not involving then in that championship.
It’s been more of a soap opera of personalities, petty grievances and grudges that has enriched the Ulster championship.
You’d want to be fairly careful about making these arguments, but there’s always been the suspicion that the Ulster championship can sometimes exist in an echo chamber.
That maybe, it has just a shade too much regard for itself.
And maybe there’s something in that. Essentially, there are media wings that focus mainly on Ulster GAA, such as the online paper Gaelic Life and The Irish News. BBCNI has massively expanded their own coverage of Gaelic Games.
There is a sense of ‘otherness’ that comes with ‘up there’ anyway, but it is heightened around issues such as the Ulster Council’s opposition towards championship reform that might have dispensed with the provincial system.
And you wouldn’t even want to get into the accusations and counter-accusations that are sniped across the table when it comes to the annual All-Stars debates concerning Ulster players.
Because for every Monaghan-Tyrone game, there’s always a Fermanagh-Derry pig of a contest. One where the gulf is apparent right away and nothing approaching a sporting contest actually happens.
Not even the Sunday Game panel could bring themselves to look too deep under the hood of that one, instead filling out the allotted hour with fluffy stories about Leitrim hitting out at social media abuse and more Biden ‘content’.
Occasionally though, Ulster football is like Mardi Gras.
To adapt a quote from the Mississippi novelist Barry Hannah about the Deep South; ‘Ulster may be wretched, but it sure can howl!’
Get instant updates on the Allianz Football and Hurling Leagues on The42 app. Brought to you by Allianz Insurance, proud sponsors of the Allianz Leagues for over 30 years.
