GAA Football

Leinster Ch'ship has been a total non-event for years now.

The only way you'll be able see the likes of a competitive Dublin v Meath game in a packed Croke Park nowadays is by sticking on a past match on YouTube.

For me, I’d trace it to the back door system. The biggest winners of the back door system were the top counties who could lose at provincial level, and beef up over a series of games in the All Ireland Series, before finally meeting provincial champions who often sat on their hands for 3-4 weeks between games. It also meant a vast increase in the number of games per season, and the novelty of playing counties like Waterford in football just didn’t appeal to bring out the crowds. Dublin’s advantages are a separate issue, as for five years before they won’t their first All Ireland and 10 before the started to dominate the AI Series, they were winning Leinster (albeit by tighter margins). Today, Kildare just about scraped over the line against Wicklow. There is no question about Dublin’s abilities, but that doesn’t explain the shocking decline in Leinster amongst counties outside of Dublin.

While the GAA waited for the money to show results they publicly stated they needed Dublin to win. Many of those tight margins they were on the wrong side of dubious refereeing decisions and the constant home advantage played a part too. How did the GAA think Dublin continuously winning would keep selling out Croker? Feels like a different reality now but I used to love sitting down on a Sunday with the dinner and watching the Leinster championship.

In fairness, I think the sell-outs prior to QFs etc stopped around 2008. The recession hit people hard, and some simply didn’t  come back. Lockdown in 2020 was another break for people who probably haven’t been back since either. But undoubtedly the over-use of Croke Park, the Dublin winning streak, and the marked decline of the other ‘big dogs’ in Leinster has resulted in the crowd we saw today. The provincials have really be hit since the into of the back-door system though, so this decline in relevance has been ongoing for longer than many think. There is no question that the excitement is a long way from the 1990s when there were 4 AI competitors in Leinster.