IT’S BEEN AN All-Ireland football championship probably like no other. Upsets and shock results have been the order of the summer as tradition has been largely thrown out the window. The 2010 title race has been all the better for its unpredictability too with the re-emergence of Down, Kildare and Dublin as serious challengers for the Sam Maguire Cup bringing fresh vitality to the quest for ultimate glory.

For nearly the guts of a decade, it’s been the Kerry and Tyrone show. The All-Irelands which didn’t fall the Kingdom way were snapped up by Mickey Harte’s group of tireless workers. Not since Armagh’s mould-breakers of 2002 has any other team got a look in. Mayo, as usual, Cork and Dublin flattered to deceive during that period, but when it came down to winning the silverware in September, it had become a two horse race.

Sligo were the team of this year’s Connacht championship, but still didn’t win it. The same fate applied to luckless Louth in Leinster, but in Munster and Ulster respectively, Kerry and Tyrone were back as top dogs. At that stage, nobody could have imagined that the All-Ireland semi-finals would go ahead without them. Jack O’Connor and Harte both railed against the system of not giving provincial winners a second chance as they struggled to cope with an early championship exit.

Down, the team which had never lost to Kerry in four previous championship clashes, again proved their nemeses in Croke Park, while Tyrone were laid low by a revitalised Dublin. Sure, Kerry were hit by injuries and suspensions, but their battle weary forces were simply unable to cope with the Mourne men’s vitality. A week later, wasteful Tyrone were bundled out by the Dubs who had turned themselves inside out in the space of a couple of months under Pat Gilroy, a dead manager walking just two months earlier.

It was the first time in six years that Dublin hadn’t won Leinster. They had scraped over Wexford after extra time in the opening round, but then their new defensive system of getting as many players as possible behind the ball was ransacked for five goals by Meath in the provincial semi-final. The Dubs looked a beaten docket in every sense of the word, but home draws in the qualifiers against Tipperary and Louth helped them to get them back on track.

Still, hardly any neutral expected them to get the better of a battle-hardened Tyrone outfit in last month’s All-Ireland quarter-final, but with star attacker Bernard Brogan still on fire and the Ulster champions untypically squandering a series of chances, Dublin survived with a late goal from newcomer Eoghan O’Gara clinching the deal. It set them up for a big collision with Cork, a team they had only lost once to in 13 previous championship encounters.

The statistics were strongly in favour of a Dublin triumph and when Brogan fired home a first minute goal last Sunday, you just knew it was going to be another fraught day for Cork in Croke Park. The Rebels may have captured the National League title with some swagger, but they hadn’t really ignited in the championship. The general assumption was that their preparations were geared for peaking later in the campaign having, perhaps, being too ready, too soon for recent campaigns.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.