Football

Ulster football must look in the mirror after worrying decade

Tyrone have been the closest Ulster side to an All-Ireland in recent years, but their failure to properly challenge Dublin is indicative of a drop-off by the whole northern province. Picture: Philip Walsh
Tyrone have been the closest Ulster side to an All-Ireland in recent years, but their failure to properly challenge Dublin is indicative of a drop-off by the whole northern province. Picture: Philip Walsh Tyrone have been the closest Ulster side to an All-Ireland in recent years, but their failure to properly challenge Dublin is indicative of a drop-off by the whole northern province. Picture: Philip Walsh

LET’S get straight into the meat of it – this hasn’t been a particularly good decade for Ulster football.

It’s well within the lifetime of many Irish News readers that the province would have gladly settled for one All-Ireland success and having three different beaten finalists, as well as a few brushes with U20, minor and club titles.

The schools have stayed strong in terms of dominating the Hogan Cup, winning five of the last ten.

But like so much of it, that’s been nothing new since the corner was turned in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ulster schools won the same number of Hogan Cups in the 1990s as this decade, and there were three each won in the ‘80s and 2000s as well.

The bare facts are these. Having won eight All-Irelands split evenly across the 20 years previous, Donegal’s 2012 success was the only Ulster joy this decade.

That team’s window was incredibly short but they’ve rebuilt and have another good team weighing in behind Michael Murphy as they start to wonder where time has gone on him. Are they an All-Ireland winning group though?

Same question for Tyrone, who have had the toolbox at their feet since 2013 but are still staring at the wheel, wondering what it is they can do next to try and change it.

And they’re the only two quite near it at the minute. Monaghan reached an All-Ireland semi-final in 2018 but what this year showed is not so much that they need to find new players, but rather new leaders among the players they’ve got.

There’s talent in their younger legs but so far, beyond Niall Kearns in his first year, there’s none of them taking the thing by the scruff of the neck.

Maybe it’s in them, but every morning they look up, the peak seems to rise.

That goes for everyone, not just Monaghan. It would be valid for you to question whether it’s fair to judge anything on a decade that has been so interminably blue.

Dublin’s untouchability muddies the water of any debate, especially one based on stats. The numbers don’t do grey areas and they don’t do lies, but they can be mischievous with the truth.

Yet it’s hard to colour the numbers because even if you’re not comparing the whole of Ulster to Dublin, you’re still comparing it to the other provinces, and to its own past performance.

And Ulster doesn’t fare that well out of the past decade.

Even forget the All-Ireland titles at senior level, of which Dublin won seven while Cork, Kerry and Donegal shook the change out of them up until 2014.

No Ulster county won a National League title, which wasn’t quite as solid a preserve for Jim Gavin’s side. They won five, Cork three (2010-2012) and Kerry and Mayo one each. Only Tyrone (2013) and Derry (2014) reached finals.

The All-Ireland club title hasn’t been north since 2012. St Gall’s and Crossmaglen won the first three of the noughties between them, but only Slaughtneil have been back in Croke Park since, losing twice.

Corofin are the club game’s yellow machine, but Ballyboden, St Vincent’s and Dr Crokes have squeezed through the gap, while Ulster’s record of reaching finals since 2012 is the worst of the four provinces.

At under-20/21 level, it’s been one All-Ireland, won by Tyrone in 2015, and just two other finals, in 2010 and 2011.

Kerry took complete command of the minor scene and Ulster did have three different finalists, as well as one winner in 2010 when the Red Hands won the Tom Markham.

While you can turn a defence out of the bare black and white of it, it is certainly a theme that a lot of the success that Ulster football had in its various guises came in the first three years of the decade.

Arguments against the thrust of this column are not in short supply. Dublin are the primary one, and particularly the fact that the rest of Leinster has performed so miserably.

There’s also the strength of Mayo, though it hasn’t had to carry Connacht football on its own back since Galway re-emerged under Kevin Walsh. And in terms of numbers, Cork and Tipperary just about did enough to bolster Munster’s performance.

The difference in Ulster and the other three right now is probably best emphasised by the National League as much as anything. Six of the nine counties will play in the top two divisions in 2020, and yet none of them have stretched their legs to really push about silverware in August.

Ulster right now has a good few decent teams, but no great team.

Great senior teams are built by great underage teams, and perhaps it’s the minor and U20 record that is the most sobering aspect of it.

Derry have been the only All-Ireland minor finalist from the province in the last five seasons, and indeed the Oak Leafers have dominated Ulster at the grade for a short spell, but they barely laid a glove on Kerry in three meetings across different years.

The signs are visible that Ulster football is definitely struggling. What’s not as obvious is why.

It’s certainly not a lack of effort. It’s not a lack of professional expertise. It’s certainly not a lack of facilities.

Is part of it the defensive shell we live beneath? That it’s so hard to win anything within the province without blowing the whole concrete budget on the foundations, and it leaves us all so bare up top?

So many of the better clubs play a counter-attacking style from they’re no age now. That drives the culture, but it doesn’t drive the standard in terms of attacking.

None of this quite constitutes a crisis, but it doesn’t quite have its usual cyclical look either. Because of the next 10 All-Irelands, it would be a surprise to see four of them come to Ulster, as happened in the 1990s and 2000s.

It was a different time, one where the north dictated the terms of football. It took the rest a while to adapt. But now the shoe is on the other foot. It’s only fair to say that Ulster football hasn’t looked closely enough in the mirror yet.

In Kerry, despite all the modernising they’ve done, the aim is still to build a footballer first and everything else second. Handpassing at underage levels is still a last resort.

If you have a lad whose first thought at 13 is to look up and use the boot, he’ll carry that for life. You can put the biceps on him later.

It’s how you do that, and who takes the lead on it. It has to be a province-wide change, otherwise it won’t have buy-in.

Athletically, Kerry are bridging the gap to Dublin across the grades. Others have yet to manage that.

There’s not a crisis, but there is a worry.

Ulster football has fallen back, of that there is no doubt.

Just as everyone else reacted to Tyrone and Armagh in the last decade, the northern counties – and the provincial council itself - have to start asking questions of themselves.