The average margin of victory across the four provincial football finals was one of the highest ever, despite the Ulster final going all the way to penalties.
With the Leinster, Munster and Connacht finals decided by a combined total of 49 points, the average margin of victory still came in at 12.25 across the four games.
In the ‘back door’ era, since 2001, that’s a figure that was only exceeded once, in 2018, when it stood at 12.75, with Galway’s four-point win over Roscommon in the Connacht final that year the only one of the four where the margin of victory was less than 10 points.
READ MORE: Louth boss Mickey Harte admits 'we were battered' by Dublin
Although Dublin’s dominance of Leinster took hold from the mid-2000s, provincial finals were still competitive affairs for the most part up to 2014, when the average across the four finals went into double figures for the first time.
In 2005 the average was as low as two points and it was regularly below five up to 2011 but it shot up to 10.25 in 2014 and has been in double figures a further four times since, with 2019 (7) and 2020 (7.25) both outliers as the Munster, Ulster and Connacht finals were all closely contested.
But that hasn’t been the case in Leinster for a long time now with Dublin reeling off routine victories year after year.
Since beating Meath by 16 points in the 2014 Leinster final, their smallest margin of victory was by eight against Kildare two years ago, while on only one other occasion (2017, when they beat Kildare by nine) have they failed to win the final by 13 points or more.
It’s a similar pattern in Munster where Kerry have picked up 10 of the last 11 titles, winning seven of those finals by margins ranging from 10 to 23 points, and with the status of the provincial competitions already watered down in this year’s new-look All-Ireland series, lop-sided finals don’t do much for their long-term status, despite the drama of the Ulster showpiece once again.
“I think it's probably time to have a proper review of the competition and see who does this benefit, these big wins, the big discrepancies between teams? Is there a better mixture? So my tune hasn't changed on that in a number of years,” said Dublin boss Dessie Farrell after his side’s runaway victory over Louth on Sunday.
“I'm sure it's very much on the GAA's and the Central Council's and Congress's own radar in terms of what to do with the provincial competitions. It's something I'm sure they're going to look at.”
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