Maniacs of 2000 - When the knockout championship went out with a bang

For those that soldiered through the football championship when there were no second chances, 2023 is a world removed. Each county this year, regardless of Sam Maguire or Tailteann Cup ambitions, is guaranteed at least four games.

After two decades, the concept of knockout qualifiers, such a shock to the long-standing traditional structure in 2001, is replaced by round-robin mini-groups.

The decision by the GAA to do away with the do-or-die straight knockout format had been mooted for a number of years before the turn of the millennium saw the final instalment of the football championship as we had known it.

For players who played either side of the turn of the millennium, it is the year before and after that are perhaps a little easier to recall.

Aodán MacGearailt was one of the promising crop of Under-21s blooded by Kerry manager Paidí Ó Sé, making his debut during the summer of 1999. What springs to mind as much as the Munster final defeat to Cork in monsoon like conditions, was the listless months that followed.

"I always remember that summer felt very long. I was deflated after the game, all the training and work that went in. It was a hollow feeling."

Ciarán Whelan's first two Leinster finals ended in defeat, but while the first in 2000, after a replay to Kildare, saw the end of the road for the Dubs, 12 months later was a different proposition entirely.

"It was a very strange environment going back for a qualifier to Sligo," he says of the game where the Raheny man bagged 1-02 in a comfortable victory in Croke Park.

"We were back training in Parnell Park the following Tuesday. It was extremely challenging for manager Tommy Carr at the time to really get us back on our feet."

If the GAA could have written the script for the