Sport

'Flip' of a coin might be best way of deciding several ties in Ulster SFC.

Kenny Archer

Kenny Archer

Kenny is the deputy sports editor and a Liverpool FC fan.

Monaghan and Tyrone might meet again in this year's Ulster SFC semi-finals after last year's final showdown at Croke Park. <br />Pic Philip Walsh
Monaghan and Tyrone might meet again in this year's Ulster SFC semi-finals after last year's final showdown at Croke Park.
Pic Philip Walsh
Monaghan and Tyrone might meet again in this year's Ulster SFC semi-finals after last year's final showdown at Croke Park.
Pic Philip Walsh

SO, one last hurrah - or, to be more accurate, thousands of last ‘G’wan ya…’, ‘For flip’s* sake, ref…’, and ‘Yeeeeooooos’ to reverberate around the grounds of Ulster this spring.

Yep, spring.

The timing feels weird enough, although the weather in April and May won’t necessarily be any worse than in June or July.

After all that everyone has gone through since March 2020 we should still be grateful for the games going ahead whenever.

We’ve also got used to a truncated timescale in recent seasons: Hallowe’en to November 22 in 2020, late June to the end of July last year.

Yet although the Ulster Senior Football Championship will live on, thankfully, it won’t quite be the same next year.

Sure, there’s still a great reward for the winners, a place in the new 16-team All-Ireland Senior Football, but that may already have been achieved through the earlier Allianz Football League.

The League will take on even greater importance, with most teams surely focussing their efforts on that competition in an attempt to secure a place in the top 16, rather than involvement of the lesser, second tier competition.

This year will be the last chance for all counties to have a guaranteed shot at both their provincial championship and the actual, overall, All-Ireland series.

This will be the 20th and last such format (at least for another few years, another few Annual and Special Congresses), having reverted to the traditional knockout system over the past two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That’s the system that’s been in place since 2001. For all the increasing denigration of the ‘back door’, it did mean that everyone tried their best in their province, then got another go in the All-Ireland series, either starting in the qualifiers or going straight into the new All-Ireland quarter-finals as provincial champions.

This year’s Ulster draw may not appear all that exciting on the face of it, with only one actual derby, and that a rather one-sided affair, Fermanagh versus Tyrone.

Yet the Ernemen do have home advantage, the leading marksman in the province this year - Sean Quigley - and absolutely no pressure on them whatsoever against the All-Ireland Champions. Whom they haven’t beaten in SFC action for 40 years… Just sayin’, like.

That preliminary round will probably lead on to another derby as the last of the four quarter-finals, with Derry awaiting the winners, and Fermanagh wouldn’t worry about going to Celtic Park if they somehow ousted the Red Hands, while the Oak Leafers wouldn’t fear taking on Tyrone in Healy Park either.

Before that match-up, we have Antrim v Cavan, Donegal v Armagh, and then Monaghan v Down. Only the last of those is one you’d confidently put a pile of money on - and even then Monaghan can pull dreadful defeats out of the bag now and then, while Down are capable of causing an upset (although their record in Clones is pretty grim).

In the first of the quarter-finals, it’s great that Antrim were drawn to host a match, and better still that the daft decision to take that game against Cavan away from Belfast was overturned.

It’s obviously an ongoing pity that Casement Park continues to lie dormant, overgrown, but it’s fitting that the previous home of Antrim GAA, Corrigan Park, will host the Breffni Blues.

The Saffrons performed well in a tricky Division Three, and Cavan comfortably returned to that level after their shock demotion last season, so the match should be as tight as the crowd packed into the home of St John’s GAC.

Then there’s Donegal against Armagh…

There’ve been a few close contests between those two counties - and some hammerings - but the scuffles and shenanigans at the end of their recent League meeting make this match-up especially eagerly anticipated.

Knockout football indeed.

The other positive aspect of the draw is that leaves open a few tantalising possibilities: perhaps a Donegal-Tyrone final, or a flashback to the dramas of 17 years ago with the Red Hands up against Armagh; maybe Monaghan meeting their neighbours to the north in a re-match of last year’s Ulster decider, or a real blast from the past, the first Cavan-Monaghan final for 70 years.

Derry, hard to believe, haven’t been in a final for 11 years; Armagh, absolutely incredibly, since 2008, a time when it seemed their provincial dominance would never come to an end.

That was the Orchardmen’s seventh final appearance (excluding replays) in 10 seasons from 1999 onwards. And they won them all.

Their latest crop under their then captain, Kieran McGeeney, promises much - but, back where that journey started then, in Ballybofey, you’d still have to favour Donegal.

Derry haven’t won Ulster since 1998, Down, astonishingly, since 1994. Antrim not since 1951; Fermanagh, never.

Since 2008 the province has been dominated by Donegal, Monaghan, and Tyrone over the past decade, with Cavan the only other county to muscle its way onto the winners’ podium, in 2020 at the Athletic Grounds.

Tyrone may hold both the Anglo-Celt and Sam Maguire Cups at present, but the brilliance of the Ulster SFC is that there are several genuine contenders to dislodge the Red Hands’ grip on the former.

It may be one last real ride on the northern rollercoaster, before the League moves a level above, but we should all head towards the matches with a spring in our step.

* Warning: not everyone says 'flip'.