ON GAELIC GAMES:Part of the fascination with the championship is it is primarily of local interest, but with fluctuating levels of broader attention

THIS AFTERNOON the 40th All-Ireland club finals will be played. Now firmly ensconced in Croke Park, they occupy a place in the GAA’s calendar light years from the curiosity pieces of the early 1970s, played in venues effectively as off-Broadway and un-revisited as the Clonskeaghs and Elm Parks of the first All-Irelands over 120 years ago.

This year’s events are truly historic. The hurlers of Portumna could become the first club in either code to win three titles in a row or Ballyhale Shamrocks could ascend to the top of the roll of honour with five championships.

And if further success for either Galway or Kilkenny couldn’t be considered exactly ground breaking, the second final will deliver the first football champions for either Antrim or Clare. It is a pity the marketing campaign for this afternoon couldn’t have made more of these narratives, instead opting for blandly generic promotion of the club finals.

At times in the past 20 seasons it has appeared as if these matches could go on

to equal the drawing power of the great competition the clubs have supplanted, the Railway Cup, which in the 1950s attracted up to 50,000 on St Patrick’s Day (see page 4), the date now successfully colonised by the clubs.

But that depends on who’s playing.

Generally, city clubs are paradoxically considered bad news for attendances because within the teeming, urban populations the sense of intimacy and familiarity with the teams are lost, whereas within smaller demographics there is an enhanced feeling of identity and being represented on a big stage by your family, friends and neighbours. But part of the fascination with the championship is it is primarily of local interest, but with fluctuating levels of broader attention.

From year to year you never quite know what’s popping up. A county that sent up the champions one year can’t get out of the province the next. Clubs find it legendarily difficult to retain the All-Ireland. To date just three clubs in football and four in hurling have managed to put titles back to back.

So for Portumna to complete the three today would be a remarkable achievement.

The club arena is by no means classless and, although victory for either St Gall’s or Kilmurry-Ibrickane would mean a title for one of the Cinderella football counties, that’s not a prevailing trend. Football is better represented in this category, with Limerick (admittedly through the third-level intervention of Thomond College), Laois (Portlaoise) and Wicklow (Baltinglass) all having won the Andy Merrigan Cup, but the role of romance has been limited.

Hurling mirrors almost exactly the caste system that governs the intercounty game. Only one MacCarthy Cup hasn’t been matched by success in the club championship – Limerick’s isolated 1973 achievement wasn’t emulated at club level and Antrim’s Loughgiel became in 1983 the only club from a county that hasn’t taken home the Liam MacCarthy since 1970 to have won the Tommy Moore Cup. Even the figures are eerily similar – with the exception of Kilkenny being under-represented at the expense of Galway, whose clubs top the hurling roll of honour.

The following statistics list the number of inter-county All-Irelands first and then the club equivalent: Offaly (four-four), Cork (9-9), Galway (3-10), Kilkenny (15-9), Tipperary (4-3), Clare (2-2), Wexford (1-1).

The football list is considerably more dispersed: Cork (3-11), Dublin (5-6), Kerry (14-5), Armagh (1-4), Galway (2-3), Down (2-2), Derry (1-3). Mayo (2) the above mentioned Limerick, Laois and Wicklow have won the club, but not the county. This afternoon will add another county to that list.

More significant is the number of Sam Maguires (11) that have been won by counties none of whose clubs have been successful – Meath (4-0), Tyrone (3-0), Offaly (3-0) and Donegal (1-0).

Today will also increase by 50 per cent the number of counties to have won a club All-Ireland in both codes.

Only Cork and Galway have managed this feat, but Clare or Antrim will, barring a replay, join them this evening. But if romance is limited in terms of underdog achievement it’s still a central feature of the championships’ attraction. Clubs from less prominent counties mightn’t win All-Irelands all that often, but they do make an impact at provincial level.

Carlow dominated Leinster with five titles in eight seasons and Éire Óg went so close to the All-Ireland in the replayed 1993 final.

Then again there is a paradox in some of these comparisons. Éire Óg are a big, organised town club. They lost to a club from the smaller village of Skibbereen, but the image was of powerful, privileged Cork against plucky Carlow.

Then there are the heart-warming narratives. At random, think of Tony Doran, who as a youngster looked set for a glittering career with a starring role in one of the most remarkable All-Ireland victories, Wexford’s 1968 defeat of Tipperary, instead laboured for years without reward trying to add to his solitary medal. Twenty one years later – and coincidentally 21 years ago today – a fortnight shy of his 43rd birthday, he won a second senior All-Ireland medal when Buffer’s Alley beat Belfast’s O’Donovan Rossa.

“Winning the All-Ireland with Buffer’s Alley was my greatest thrill,” Doran said in the late Jack Mahon’s For Love of Town and Village.

It’s a theme that runs throughout the championship. Those fortunate enough to be able to compare their feelings on winning an All-Ireland with club and county invariably elevates the former with its close connection to home, family and friends.

One player who may well have a major influence in this afternoon’s football final, St Gall’s CJ McGourty – someone for whom the matter became an issue – expressed his view of the club-county balance in the weekend’s Sunday Tribune. “You have to understand that I’m playing for the people of St Gall’s when I play for Antrim,” he said. “The people in this club are the people that made me the player I am. I know guys who won’t play for their clubs once they make it at county level. They just see the glamour. I don’t want that. I will choose Gall’s every single time.”

There wouldn’t be too many digressions from that attitude amongst the players who start at Croke Park today.