LET the number-crunching – and teeth-gnashing begin.
Even with 11 (eleven!) different counties represented among the 45 nominations for this year's PwC Football Allstars there will, as ever, undoubtedly be some outcry about some omissions.
Just for the record, all those whom you absolutely can't believe haven't been nominated were names that yours truly put forward and argued strongly for…
Truth be told (this time), there wasn't huge debate over too many of the nominations, with at least three-quarters, and perhaps more than 80 per cent of that list of 45 effectively picking 'themselves'.
Maybe there's some dreaded 'group-think' influencing that, but more likely there's so much opportunity to observe and assess the better and best players that it's fairly clear who are the main contenders in each department.
The perennial argument that players from the more successful counties are judged more favourably will be rolled out once more, and there is something in that. Yet there is also something in the reality that certain counties happen to be more successful because they happen to include some of the better/best players in their ranks…
Those counties aren't always the same either.
Last year Tyrone received a record-equalling 15 nominations. This year? Zero. Zilch. None. Darren McCurry was discussed but didn't make the cut.
Derry are the notable 'new entrants' this year, the Ulster champions deservedly garnering seven nominations, with Limerick also getting into the mix by earning one nomination.
Besides, although there were also nominees from 11 different counties last year, it's rather more remarkable that the same number was reached this year.
Only the 16 counties that contested the 2022 All-Ireland SFC proper were considered, so just five missed out. The aforementioned Tyrone, Ulster finalists Donegal, Connacht finalists Roscommon, Louth, and Meath.
Nominations do matter, and certainly matter more to some counties rather than others.
Obviously in Kerry it's all about the actual Allstars themselves, and shelf-loads of them, and that's become the way in Dublin too over the past decade.
Yet even the next four counties on the roll of honour – Cork, Tyrone, Meath, and Galway – average only just over one Allstar each over the previous 51 years of the awards scheme. 'Just' the 207 between those four, fact-fans.
Clearly Meath and Tyrone would have been happy, or happier, to get even one nomination this year rather than none.
Equally clearly, the All-Ireland champions (Kerry), beaten finalists (Galway), Ulster champs (Derry), and Leinster champs (Dublin) – who also lost to the eventual winners – will dominate this year's actual Allstars team.
It was (mostly) ever thus.
The average number of counties represented over the past 10 years was 4.7, just four on half of those occasions. That is a reduction from the previous 10 years, which averaged almost six counties on each Allstar team – with eight in that strange season of 2010.
That's highly unlikely to be the case this year.
Without revealing any trade secrets, 20 of the players on the list were nominated by every single selector.
All but one of those was from Kerry, Galway, Dublin, or Derry.
To paraphrase an old northern Irish saying, '20 into 15 won't go…'
So, there'll be more complaints at the end of next month, but not everyone can ever be happy unless everyone wins an award – and even then many will be unhappy because, quite rightly, those awards have thus been devalued.
Sport, like life, is about winners and losers, about awards and choosers. The latter have to be human and therefore fallible.
Sure, with modern technology, there might be the opportunity for Allstars selectors to watch every minute of every match – League and Championship – before making their choices.
Yet even then, the final verdicts will be matters of opinion, even if they are to a large extent based on facts (and statistics).
For example, it's a matter of fact that no side pushed Kerry closer in the Championship than Dublin, only losing by the minimum margin at the very end of the All-Ireland semi-final.
However, it's certainly arguable that Galway gave the Kingdom more of a game in the All-Ireland Final, even though the Tribesmen ended up losing by a larger margin, four points to be precise.
Dublin were largely kept in contention against Kerry by an absolutely extraordinary goal from Cormac Costello; although, given that these ARE individual awards, some might say – ahem – that the 28-year-old should have earned a nomination for that alone. Even though it was in the Gaelic football 'Clasico'.
The days have long gone of the Leinster and Munster champions being levels above their counterparts from Connacht and Ulster, with the representatives of the western and northern provinces only mostly 'making up the numbers' during the Seventies and Eighties.
It's widely accepted that the Ulster Championship is the most competitive – but none of the northern teams reached the final this year.
How much weight do you give to League games in comparison to Championship? Don't provincial finals and All-Ireland series games matter more than anything which went before?
Somewhere someone is devising a formula to assess and accurately account for all the variables, but for now it's still a matter of argument.
