It has been an elongated senior football championship and at first some GAA supporters didn’t fully understand the new format for the Sam Maguire Cup Round Robin series. It was thought that the counties who topped the four groups would get home advantage in the quarter-finals. Not so, as all four quarter-finals go ahead at Croke Park this weekend; what winning the group meant was a direct route to the quarter-finals, while the counties that finished second and third in their groups had to play-off to get to the last eight. Armagh, Derry, Dublin and Kerry topped their respective groups and now they will probably be favorites to advance to the semi-finals.
However, this season the form of every inter-county football team has been inconsistent and while an accumulator backing the four that topped their groups sounds attractive, it’s far from a guaranteed bet. No doubt the stand out tie of the weekend is the meeting of old rivals Dublin and Mayo on Sunday at 4 p.m. Mayo won the National League back in April under new manager Kevin McStay, a week later they were knocked out the Connacht Championship by Roscommon. They came back to blow away Kerry in Killarney, struggled at home against Louth and lost to Cork in Limerick before beating Galway by a point in Salthill last Sunday.
Mayo have never been afraid of Dublin even in the halcyon days of the five in a row, but I would give a hesitant vote to the Dubs.
Derry will be fancied to beat a gradually improving Cork side in the curtain-raiser on Sunday. It will be the first championship meeting between he counties since the 1993 All-Ireland final when Eamonn Coleman led the Oak Leaf to their first-ever Sam Maguire Cup win.
On Saturday the action gets under way at 3.45pm when Kerry and Tyrone meet. Two years ago their semi-final meeting was postponed due to a covid outbreak in the Tyrone squad and after a postponement the Red Hand beat Kerry and went on to beat Mayo in the final. That defeat cost Kerry manager Peter Keane his job and current Kerry manager Jack O’Connor will be hoping to keep the Kerry fans supporters happy on Saturday with a win. O’Connor has Tyrone native Paddy Tally as his defense coach and that should help the Kingdom tighten up at the back.
