Age of empires over ahead of 2025 season?

As we reach the mid-2020s, the inter-county football scene suddenly resembles the early 2000s.

Ulster teams hogging all the silverware, while the Dubs are increasingly worried about whether they'll be able to keep it kicked out in the Leinster championship next year.

It's all a far cry from the turn of the decade when we were still in the midst of the most oppressive era of dominance that inter-county Gaelic football had ever known, with no hint of the end in sight.

Back in the eerily surreal days of the Covid championship, the air was thick with recrimination. Every crushing Dublin victory played out in an accusatory atmosphere, the cue for another round of apocalyptic whingeing.

The growing consensus then was that the county system, never the most equitable of arrangements at any time, was now totally kaput, broken beyond repair.

The oft-aired stat was that the average age of the Dublin team came down steadily over the course of the Jim Gavin era, the surest indicator that was not a once-off golden generation but a new permanent reality.

Wary of the surrounding narrative, Dublin fans, always renowned for giving it the big one back in the Pillar Caffrey era, had of late begun adopting a jarringly wistful tone, sighing "ah, sure we know it won't last forever, just have to enjoy these blessed halcyon days while we can, ring-a-ring-a-rosey, as the liiiight decliiiiines..."

It was not uncommon to hear some Dublin supporters quietly utter the heretical thought that it might not be a bad idea for them to ship a beating soon. Five-in-a-row was historic. Six-in-a-row was meh.

Well, the light is declining now. The rural alarmists may be belatedly realising that the Dublin 2010s team was a golden generation after all. The issue on that