One of the sensibilities hardest to kick when it comes down to championship reform in football is the idea that a team can spring a shock. The narcotic power of these occurrences is such that it can persuade counties to undergo decades of ritual humiliation, dulling the pain and feeding hallucinogenic visions of a future in which anything is possible.
Waterford can still speak with pride about the day – June 2nd, 1957 – when Kerry came to the Sportsground (now Walsh Park) in slight disarray but with a debutant at wing back, Waterville's Mick O'Dwyer, who would go on to greater things. A one-point win, 2-5 to 0-10, ensured that the crowd at the final whistle was twice what it had been at the start of the match, as curious local residents filed into the ground to have a look at the unfolding history.
And it was certainly worth a look, as during the entire history of the Munster football championship Waterford have only managed to beat Kerry twice in 25 meetings. That was one of them and ever since it remains the recent evidence that such a thing can be done.
But can it? Fifty-nine years ago Kerry travelled to Waterford with a bare 15 because of withdrawals. A corner back, Tim Barrett, had to play in goal and was 'rushed' for the decisive goal. There was still only a point in it.
Maybe in some post-apocalyptic landscape of the future, Kerry will again travel to a championship match in Waterford with the bare 15 and no goalkeeper – and even in those circumstances you wouldn’t want to be the team playing them first up in the qualifiers – but until then we know that the fixture will remain positioned on either side of a chasm.
Thirty years ago in a few weeks another shock would go down in legend. Despite playing in Division Three of the NFL, Laois managed to win the competition in those days of equal access to the play-offs and before the advent of divisional finals. Along the way they beat Leinster champions Dublin and Ulster champions and league holders Monaghan.
In a famous challenge match for the re-opening of O’Moore Park, which followed the league triumph and drew a crowd of nearly 10,000, Laois beat then All-Ireland champions Kerry by 2-13 to 1-7.
Four weeks later though they found themselves out of the Leinster championship at the first time of asking, after a lunatic engagement with Wicklow in Aughrim saw four players sent off, three of them from Laois.
Cushion
The impact of these shocks was intensified because there were no qualifiers to cushion it. Laois, for all their high hopes, wouldn’t kick a ball in the championship for another 12 months.
Wicklow, however , 30 years later have still to win Leinster and are now one of a select category of counties, which has further dwindled in that time to two – themselves and Fermanagh – never to have won a senior provincial title.
These are just a couple of examples of shocks from the past, worth thinking about because the current rhythms of the football year have become inimical to the concept.
A former intercounty manager said recently when asked might Derry surprise Tyrone next month that such things don't happen anymore even in Ulster. It's a sweeping statement and of course there have been extraordinary days when Wexford and Fermanagh have reached All-Ireland semi-finals; but, in terms of the trend, he's right.
Tyrone haven't won their province in six years but each season they have been beaten by Donegal or Monaghan, the two counties who have won all the Ulster titles in the meantime and twice they have progressed farther in the All-Ireland series than either of their rivals.
Such is the attention to detail of the top teams that it’s impossible to imagine defeats hitting them out of the blue. Donegal’s win over Dublin in 2014 was hailed as a miracle but the counties had shared the previous three All-Irelands between them. For all the contemporary assumptions, how big a surprise is that?
Whereas the qualifiers have given a sense of liberation to counties with the ambition to exploit it, they have also all but guaranteed the strongest counties’ passage to August, which has become the elite battleground.
Higher division
Last year, of the 47 football championship ties, six resulted in a county from a lower division beating a county from a higher division – a crude but indicative measure of a surprise outcome.
The biggest genuine shock was Kildare's demolition of Cork in Thurles but the latter were shattered after losing against Kerry in a replay they felt they should never have conceded; and even the winners departed the championship a week later to leave two massive defeats by Dublin and Kerry sticking out like broadswords from the body of their championship season.
The strong counties prepare meticulously for the championship with resources for fitness training, strength and conditioning, diet whereas the weaker ones struggle to get to the starting line.
Is anyone shocked anymore?
smoran@irishtimes.com
