Christy O'Connor on new and improved football championship: Kerry v Cork was one of the games of the year 

One evening during training in the summer of 2024, when Kerry were working on game-situations, where one team was trying to break down the other with 15 men behind the ball, the mood hanging over Fitzgerald Stadium was as heavy as a pall of dead air.

Lifeless. Flat. Soulless. A beautiful evening still felt dark and grey. The attacking team were focused on creating space and scoring opportunities, but the lack of energy and excitement around the challenge mirrored the mood.

The management were so bored at what they were trying to coach, and watch, that one member turned to two others and said: “Football is finished."

Kerry were desperately trying to stay positive when they never felt as strait-jacketed in an increasingly ultra-defensive environment. Yet the emotional state that evening was nearly a metaphor for what became a strangulated season.

From early on in the 2024 league, Kerry seemed incapable of breaking free from those chains. No team was going to allow Kerry play the game they want to, especially with their attacking talent, but they never really found their mojo. A theme which began during the spring continued into the summer.

Despite racking up some big scores, the 2024 championship smacked of being a slog. 

Almost every team they played set up defensively. Kerry were playing a game, and a style, they have never liked but none of that is new either. Had they adapted enough? Could they find a way out of the morass? Kerry couldn’t.

ABANDONED

The players and management were frustrated but the supporters were so fed up with what they were watching that they effectively abandoned the team. Kerry supporters have always been notoriously fickle but they were outnumbered 10:1 by the Armagh fans for the 2024 All-Ireland semi-final.

Kerry want to win with style, but adapting to that New World Order had been a constant challenge. It was never more of a struggle than in 2024, but the introduction of the new rules and a new way liberated Kerry and saw them storm to another All-Ireland. And they did so with a smile on their faces.

“I really enjoyed the year,” Jack O’Connor said to Damian Lawlor in his post-match TV interview after the All-Ireland final. “I’m not just saying that now because we won. We had great fun, great craic, we enjoyed being together. We enjoyed the training. Lads enjoyed each other’s company.” 

The new rules and the potential for Kerry to prosper in that environment got them excited again. It got everybody excited.

"It brought people back talking about and watching the game,” said David Clifford in November. “Teams go for it. Teams have a crack off it. Probably when you see it this year, maybe you realise you actually weren't enjoying it as much as you thought the previous years, if that makes sense.” 

Kerry clearly enjoyed the season because they won everything going – the league, Munster and the All-Ireland. But it was still a more enjoyable championship because the new rules made it a far better spectacle.

Louth’s Leinster title success and liberation from 68 years of hurt and disappointment was wholly reflective of that new rejuvenated and reinvigorated mood. The Leinster final had been reduced to a mere formality through Dublin’s dominance but it was finally a huge occasion again with the presence of Meath and Louth and the golden opportunity that it presented. And Louth gloriously grabbed it.

The Leinster championship was another surprise in itself. Meath blew it wide open when taking out Dublin while Kildare-Louth was another really good contest that went to the wire. Two years on from getting hammered by Dublin by 21 points in the Leinster final, who would have predicted back then that Louth would be champions within 24 months? Nobody.

Three of the four provincial finals were highly entertaining games. Galway-Mayo in Connacht was enthralling while the Armagh-Donegal clash in mid-May was undoubtedly one of the greatest Ulster finals, only decided after extra-time.

That was the best game of the summer, which was followed by the Cork-Kerry Munster semi-final which Kerry won after extra-time and the Derry-Galway round robin match which ended in a draw.

There has been a lack of enough jeopardy in the round robin over the last three years but Armagh were the only team with nothing immediate to play for ahead of the final round of games in June. And even they had the chance to knock Galway out.

The games were more engaging but the field also felt more open than ever before. Six, at a stretch seven, of the eight teams that reached the All-Ireland quarter-finals would have felt capable of winning Sam Maguire before that weekend. Meath wouldn’t have been included in that category but then they took out Galway.

That was the most exciting game of that weekend because a pattern had also begun to emerge by then of teams being capable of stretching ahead of their opponents. 

The one-sided games across the last three matches was the biggest disappointment of the season.

Kerry only beat Tyrone by six points but it could easily have been a 16-point margin. Donegal’s 20-point victory over Meath was the biggest All-Ireland semi-final beatdown in 30 years. 

HARSH

A 10-point defeat may have been harsh on Donegal but Kerry were in such control so early in the final that the game felt over long before it was. It was the biggest losing margin in a final for 18 years.

Kerry were purring by then because they turned the new rules into a weapon. When they blitzed Armagh in the quarter-final, Kerry became the first team to hit more than 0-30 in Croke Park.

Five two-pointers did inflate their final tally that afternoon but, in old money, Kerry’s score would still have been a highly impressive 0-27. That’s a hurling scoreline.

And that’s now modern football.