Whatever happened to the most competitive province in the country? Three games so far in the Ulster Championship and the winning margins have been six points, 11 points and eight points. The average winning margin at this point last year was four points - now it’s more than double that.
Here’s a silly comparison but we’ll make it anyway. In three games so far on the Ulster Championship, the combined winning margins add up to 25 points. In three games in Connacht, the total is 27. The difference is New York, Leitrim and London are supposed to get hammered by Division One teams. Antrim, Derry and Armagh are not supposed to take hidings off Division Two teams.
Granted, it’s a tiny sample size but this is Ulster football we’re talking about. It’s supposed to be tight, suffocating and unknowable. The formbook is supposed to go out the window and if the better side is generally likely to come through in the end, they’re supposed to know all about it the next day.
But Fermanagh, Tyrone and now Cavan have all beaten the handicap pulling up, with the games decided long before the end. Actually, maybe the most remarkable fact is that these matches have been over early. Look at the half-time scores. Fermanagh 0-9 Antrim 0-2. Tyrone 3-8 Derry 0-6. Cavan 1-9 Armagh 0-7.
On the face of it, this arguably shouldn’t be so surprising. Fermanagh, Cavan and Tyrone have all been in All-Ireland quarter-finals in the past three seasons. Tyrone have been in two All-Ireland semi-finals two of the last three years. All three teams are clearly on an upward curve and so they presumably ought to be taking care of business this early in the year.
But there have always been upwardly mobile teams in Ulster and they’ve usually had to earn their corn. Occasionally you have a Donegal 2012 or a Tyrone 2003 who are so obviously far ahead of the chasing pack that they smash the province to smithereens but in general, the road is fraught from early on for a good Ulster team.
Tyrone’s third All-Ireland had to come through the back door because they lost an Ulster quarter-final to Down after a replay and extra-time. When Down themselves made an All-Ireland final two years later, they suffered a revenge beating from Tyrone and had to go through the qualifiers. The Donegal side that made the final two years ago started their summer trailing Derry by 0-6 to 0-4 at half-time.
But so far in 2016, the championship’s most egalitarian province has all of a sudden turned into haves on one side and have-nots on the other. And if all know form holds true, the expectations are that it will continue that way when Monaghan take on Down in Clones on Sunday.
The bookmakers have Monaghan as four-point favourites early in the week. And why not? Down had an atrocious league, have had chunks ripped from their relatively high-achieving teams of the past few years and go into this with spirits seemingly as low as they’ve ever been. Monaghan, by contrast have won two of the last three Ulster Championships. So, four points probably seems just about right on paper.
And yet, in the past 50 years of championship encounters between the teams, Monaghan have only ever beaten Down by four points twice and by more than that just once. That’s one time in 15 games over half a century that they’ve covered a four-point spread. Ulster football historically doesn’t allow such things to happen with any regularity.
Maybe 2016 is different. You’d kind of hope not, though. If we have no Ulster Championship to keep our interest through the early part of the summer, what do we have at all, at all?
