What’s to gain from provincial traditions?

Grey March gave way to sunny April, all inside a week. A chill in the air despite the blue sky – a reminder that all that’s sunny comes with a cost.

So what are the facts, because that’s all that will be remembered from last Sunday’s match come end of season. Mayo, in MacHale Park, defeated Sligo 2-20 to 2-17 in the first round of the Connacht championship. How they did so is parsed out for you, kick by kick, blow by blow, elsewhere in these pages.

And me? Well, if ever we needed convincing that the provincial championship needs putting to bed, then this match should be the place to start.

Yes, the result was slightly tight, but for two reasons: Mayo’s inability to get clear water and Sligo’s inability to narrow that blue water. Sligo go into the Tailteann Cup, a trophy essentially designed for Division Three and Four teams like themselves, but a cup that will probably be won by a team languishing around the bottom of Division Two.

We, for our success, go on next to play Leitrim, recently relegated, winless, from Division Three to Division Four, a team that couldn’t field a side three weeks ago. Cui Bono, as Mr Wade my old Latin teacher might have asked back in 1965. Who benefits, who profits from this system? Sligo, a team that since we last won Sam Maguire, have beaten us four times in 74 years, or Leitrim who, in the same period, have had three victories against us?

Leitrim and Sligo will dissolve into the Tall Thin cup when perhaps both counties might be better off now giving air to their respective clubs and rebuilding a broader base of footballers for next season. More than likely, after we beat Leitrim, we either win or lose against Galway or Roscommon. Both of us will be seeded one or two in the farcical four team groups, necessitating sixteen games to rid four teams. Technically, with head to heads or scoring difference applied, we could make a preliminary quarter-final with a single point.

I know, there’s change mooted next season. If we can ingest a plethora of rule changes, scoring arcs, 4v3s, two pointers and hooters, are we not bound to inject a morsel of jeopardy into our games in the meantime. April will be for showers and shedding teams until we get to the next phase. More May(hem) until we finally get to spitting on the hands, rolling up the sleeves, donning the handkerchiefs on heads to ward off the heat and buingy ice lollies, reminding of the time when giants and legends were carved on any given Sunday where you won or died and went home. Sundays that wrought from granite men like Micko, Culloty, Paddy Cullen, O’Toole, Páidí Sé, The ‘Horse’ Kennelly, Seamus Leydon and Noel Tierney, all recently departed, names that set fire to our Sundays, not Instagrammed them.

What new do we know about Mayo after Sunday’s win against Sligo? Aidan is central, as is Ryan O’Donoghue. We threw in a nice few debutantes – and that’s always welcome, a guy’s got to start somewhere – but it’s the next steps that count.

We scored 2-20, had only three misses by the 43rd minute but butchered a few chances of more scores. That’s Mayo. And Sligo? They scored 2-17, butchered certainly two more goals and clipped a few points wide. Truth be told, that score reflected both sides. We deserved to win, they didn’t, and they’ll know it. That’s taking nothing from them. Anytime you post 2-17, you’re doing a hell of a lot of the right things. Unfortunately, they now drop back to playing at a level that prevented them narrowing those three damn points difference with Mayo. Cui Bono?

Looking at our equals, Donegal beat Derry by ten points, a Dublin firing on three cylinders will see off most of early Leinster, and likewise Kerry in Munster. Which leaves us with the ghost in the room. Will our leisurely Connacht man’s ramble to the final be better than Galway’s or Roscommon’s route? Which brings me back to Connacht and the provinces. Apart from Ulster, the rest are on a resuscitation tube. Kerry and Dublin will be etched onto silver in their provinces and Connacht is a two-way street, occasionally sidetracked by the Roscommon crowd.

Listening to the match on Midwest, I yearned for home. But the men behind the mics informed me that the crowds were sparse, very few heading up from the old Bacon Factory end. Whilst I missed Mayo and home, many in Mayo missed MacHale Park. That’s a sound that should be heard as loud as the hooter. More, in a world where the GAA and headquarters are trying to spread the product thinner, tends always to fail. Paywalls are fine for a certain generation. I won’t pay. I’ll buy my ticket, support my team but not enrich any entity profiting from the volunteerism that people like me have given to the great game.

As the strive to amalgamate the camogie, ladies and men’s games gathers pace, so will the costs. Who bears them? So, Sunday’s game in Castlebar won’t go down in the annals because everyone’s a winner. Mayo stay in Sam, Sligo stay in another cup, but the discerning eye will choose what to buy and what not to.

Anyway, to sum up, Mayo did what was expected of them, Sligo may have done more than what was expected of them, but with a caveat. Could they have done better? What if Pat Spillane had goaled midway through the second-half? But he didn’t.

The match will be filed under the done and dusted ledger and Leitrim moves onto the screen. Years ago, in the obituary section of the Irish newspapers, printed at the end of the obituary was the following: “American and British newspapers please copy”. It was our quaint way of connecting with our, alas, sadly exiled relations abroad.

I think I’ll absent myself from writing about our next match. It’ll be more of the same, just probably Leitrim not performing as good as Sligo. So just please copy above. I don’t see any substantial change. See ye in the final.