DIFFERENT year, another lockdown.
The light at the end of the tunnel has to be the vaccine and how quickly this can be rolled out.
It will be a wonderful sight when I drive past GAA pitches up and down the country and young people and adults are vying for space on the pitch.
Maybe the sun is splitting the trees and the club is a hive of activity again?
This is something we all have to hope for in 2021 and, if nothing else, visualising this can help us through the long nights of January and February.
With the Allianz League split into various sections based on geography, one would assume that from an Ulster perspective it will almost feel like a ‘mini’ Ulster Championship.
When that particular competition commences in May, the familiarity established earlier in the year, may have a bearing on the Anglo-Celt’s final destination.
You have the holders Cavan, reinvigorated by 2020’s Championship, with a belief and a confidence that was perhaps lacking in previous campaigns and, as a result, they will not relinquish their title easily.
Donegal will be spurred on by the return of Odhrán Mac Niallais and an Ulster final defeat that no-one predicted.
Were they complacent?
The thing about complacency is that you can never really know for sure if it’s there until ultimately it costs you a result.
In team sport, at that level, it only takes a few men to be off their game on a particular day and the team suffers as a result.
That’s why it is extraordinary to see how Dublin have managed to secure six All-Ireland titles in-a-row.
At times the Dubs have needed to be brilliant to win the title.
However, they haven’t needed to be brilliant to secure titles on a few occasions, especially in the season just past.
Mayo made too many mistakes in the All-Ireland final. Yes, they got many things right – but you need to be perfect against Dublin, given their depth, and also hope they have an off-day.
One team looking to challenge Dublin will be Tyrone and it will be interesting to see how their management change beds in.
Like any handover of power, there is always a bounce, but Tyrone have not been totally unsuccessful in the last number of years either.
Last season apart, they have been involved at the latter end of the Championship and have also been to an All-Ireland final. They have also won a few Ulster titles (importantly against a great Donegal side) along the way, so success, and the bar for the Logan/Dooher joint- management team, is presumably nothing less than an All-Ireland title.
That means breaking Dublin.
That’s a significant ask.
However, a large part of me felt that the leaning towards a change in management for the Red Hands stemmed from a playing style that didn’t get the best out of the forward players Mickey Harte had at his disposal.
I think you could see a Tyrone side who could become serious challengers to Dublin.
Armagh will not see the benefit from the upcoming season in Division One.
Again, given the split on geographical grounds, not having the opportunity to play against Kerry, Mayo and Galway in a full League programme, is disappointing from a playing perspective.
When we played in the top flight for a number of years, we loved going to those teams and getting a result – there was a freedom to how they played in comparison to the typical Ulster model.
That suited Down football.
Armagh are rather purist in those terms, so being hamstrung by Ulster derby games will constrain how they get the best out of themselves.
Kieran Donaghy’s addition to the management team was a leftfield appointment, something few would have predicted, outside Kieran McGeeney of course.
Donaghy is a fine pundit and obviously has ambitions of management, so for him, it is perhaps a case of dipping his toe in the water at that level, serving an apprenticeship without the pressure of being the number one.
It’s surprising, given where Kerry are at, that Peter Keane didn’t consider Donaghy for his team.
If Kerry have their house in order, they have the potential to challenge Dublin year on year but there is something not right within the management dynamic in the Kingdom currently.
That was clear in the defeat to Cork a few months ago.
Keane had Donie Buckley in Kerry and Buckley was hugely popular and liked there (and in Mayo), and his departure again pointed to something not being quite right.
Buckley has teamed up with Seamus McEnaney in Monaghan, which will make the Farneymen another team to watch, a team capable of beating anyone on their day.
The big problem Monaghan have is that they have a fair splattering of players in their 30s.
And these players remain some of their best. With the best will in the world, you do need younger players of high quality coming through year on year. It keeps everyone on their toes.
Down, while disappointed with a second half against Cavan, have room for optimism in 2021 and beyond.
They have the raw materials to build a team capable of challenging the other heavyweights in Ulster.
There is no reason why promotion from Division Two isn’t a realistic goal in 2021.
Fermanagh and Derry are stuck in no-man’s land at the minute with expectations at a somewhat low ebb.
It will be difficult to see how 2021 will bring any significant change in that assertion.
Antrim have an opportunity to build on Enda McGinley’s appointment as team manager, with promotion from Division Four the very obvious starting point.
McGinley will not suffer from any inferiority complex and no doubt players will be able to feed off this.
The one thing that 2021 will be, is different, with a split divisional structure to the League.
Who knows, by the time the Championship comes around, crowds may have returned and a return to that buzz one experiences when walking into a county ground on a summer’s day will take the game we love to a new level of appreciation in all of us.
I can’t wait to hear the chanting of ‘flags, hats and head-bands’.
