Why do you live in Dublin if you dislike it so much?

@paulocon: The FBD League is the ‘pre-season’ tournament in Connacht . Munster has the McGrath Cup, Leinster the O’Byrne Cup and Ulster the Dr McKenna Cup in football. It’s kind of ironic that some teams treat the ‘pre season’ tournaments more seriously than the League or the Championship. But that has been the way of it since ‘professional amateurism’ (or is it ‘amateur professionalism’? – I can never tell) got hauld of the Gah in the late 1990s.

Great use of the word ‘flukey’. Oh, and it’s the Allianz Natonal League by the way and I’m quite fine with my mental instabliity – when you come from Louth, you’ll take football whatever time of the year you can get it.

Ps On the mental instability bit. My home club has been trying to win a Junior A Championship for many years (even when we were Junior B we were trying to win it!), yet we have never even got to a final! Every year our local press tip us to break the hoodoo and every year we fall flat on our arses. We seem to have a Jekell and Hyde relationship with Gaelic Football – on our day we are like Arsenal (including the showboating short passing mullarkey) but the truth is that our day is seldom. Our championship graph for the last decade is like the cross section of a Tour de France Alpine or Pyrenean stage; consistency is our bugbear, even within 60 minutes of games! Trying to make sense of this Newcastle Utd yo-yoing (yes, I’m a fan!) has left many of our die-hard clubmen (and women) close to nervous breakdowns on occasion. Watching our team struggle and depart out of the championship last Saturday night (at about the same time as Murph’s beloved Galway) was yet another chapter in the soul destroying experience of following them. Of course, when your self-proclaimed ‘star player’ (and Cork junior regular to boot – there’s a clue in there) up sticks for what would be considered an average senior football team in the city at the end of last year then ’tis all over apparently. Memo to Murph, have a look at the Southern Star on Thursday!

I wholeheartedly agree with you Paul. Go to any League game (inter-county or Club) and the atmosphere is totally different. The clientele are more knowledgeable (especially if your brother is doing stats for one of the teams involved), the chat is better and the banter can be heard over a mile away! As someone who once togged out for a Junior C league game following a severe night on the tiles, only to be outshone by a team-mate who turned up 5 mins before thrown-in having pulled an all-nighter, League matches are definitely where it’s at!

Thanks for the clarification John although I’m not sure I’d categorise the O’Byrne Cup as ‘pre-season’. For Louth, it’s a very big deal. By the time we get to the final (as we have done on occasion recently), we are right in the middle of our season-proper. This year for example, we ran a handy Kildare side ragged in Newbridge for 35 minutes before retreating into our shell for the 2nd half in a style reminiscent of Inter v Barca at the Nou Camp in the Champions League semi-final 2nd leg of 2010. However, whilst Louth have always had a Diego Milito or two in the forward line, we don’t have a back line comparable with Maicon, Samuel, Lucio and Zanetti so our ‘parking the bus’ tactics failed to see us over the finishing line on that occasion. The O’Byrne cup leaves us in good shape for the National League and as I am sure you are aware, any GAA fan worth his salt will tell you that the League is precisely where it’s at. I feel for the GAA fan whose only experience is chomping on over-priced hot-dogs in a sunny Croke park in July or August. Go to any league match around the country, take a good look around the ground and you will see a pretty rare specimen of the human race, a specimen who go into hibernation come May. Ask them why they are there and they probably won’t be able to give you an answer – all they’ll know for sure is that they are travelling to Dungarvan, Aughrim or Castlebar the following week. For me, the championship is kind of like those meaningless friendly games Ireland play 3 or 4 weeks after the Premiership is finished when most of the good players are on holidays and the ones who can’t afford a holiday come over to Dublin for a few days craic. My final word is to issue a warning to those who cant help but ‘flirt’ with the championship – looked what happened to us (Louth) last year when we decided to take it seriously! I’m glad that normal service was resumed this year with defeats to Carlow and Meath in quick succession and I look forward to the resumption of the season proper come January. Like Guinness, GAA is best enjoyed very cold.