All-Ireland Round 1 winners and losers - provincial pain as Sligo buck the trend

Eight games into the new All-Ireland group stage format and the GAA have been gifted exactly what they wanted – competitiveness.

There may still be qualms about the system and question marks about how hard teams were going in some fixtures, but after the eight first-round games, we've had three draws, Division 3 Westmeath coming close to making that an even 50% and no team winning by more than five points.

As far as opening skirmishes go, that’s exactly what the association desired when this new style was adopted.

What they would not have wanted is the very clear evidence that teams that didn’t fare as well in the provincial arena appeared better placed to attack in round one.

Let’s look at the evidence – and we’ll start with the four provincial champions who all started with home fixtures.

It was much the same for the provincial finalists. Louth may have beaten Cork in the league, but the Rebels dominated much of Saturday’s clash and held on to win despite a final-quarter stumble.

Armagh were finding Westmeath an unsolvable conundrum – Dessie Dolan’s men owning the ball for almost the entirety of the second half – until a brilliant moment from Andrew Murnin saw him flick the ball into Conor Turbitt’s path for a game-changing goal in the final minutes.

Clare welcomed a confidence-sapped Donegal to Ennis but were overrun by Aidan O’Rourke’s side in the second half with the Ulster men taking until the break to realise that the Banner were there to be exposed.

There, of course, is one obvious exception – and that comes in the form of Tony McEntee’s Division 4 side Sligo.

Humbled by Galway, many were anticipating another heavy defeat when a Kildare side visited not long off the back of pushing Dublin all the way in the Leinster