THE LAST POINT: Experiencing the full Irish of emotions

We all know what the Full Irish is - a traditional breakfast full of bacon, sausage, eggs, pudding, tomatoes and lots more besides that would fill you for the day, everything you could possibly want to start your day. Well, last weekend, I managed to experience the full Irish of emotions when watching three Leitrim teams in championship action.

To say there was a difference between the games is an understatement as I witnessed despair and resignation as  Lavey's superb grounds in Cavan attracted only the most diehard Leitrim fans and family members for the Tier 3 All-Ireland Minor Semi-Final on Saturday afternoon, to a quiet satisfaction later that evening when Leitrim probably defied what a lot of us feared and went toe to toe with Kildare in the Tailteann Cup.

Both those games were completely  eclipsed by the explosion of joy in Ballinamore's Pairc Sheain Ui Eslin on Sunday when Leitrim Ladies  shocked  favourites Tyrone in the  All-Ireland Intermediate championship, the presence of four young girls’ teams who were there for the halftime exhibition adding enormously to the excitement and noise from the stand as they roared and cheered the Green & Gold to victory.

Three teams, three very different outcomes that are almost impossible to draw a line between. In all three contests, Leitrim faced a team with a considerable reputation who were expected to win and, in all honesty, all three teams wearing green attacked those favourites as if their lives depended on it, the Ladies with the most success against the team with the highest reputation of the trio Leitrim faced, so go figure!

Analysing the Minor loss to Down is both simple and quite complicated - the Mourne men are clearly too strong for Tier 3 but that's where they found themselves as they came out on the wrong side of a couple of narrow defeats in the Ulster championship. If there is one team who knows how they feel, it is this Leitrim Minor side after two heartbreaking losses at the hands of Sligo,  losses that have had a  monumental knock-on effect on their season.

THE LAST POINT: REWARD FOR KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE

I'd be reluctant to go into the whys and why nots concerning this year's Minor team precisely because they are young footballers with so much ahead of them. I will say that the quality of our underage teams is definitely improving since the move to 13 and 15-a-side but there are a few structural issues lurking in the background of underage football that will need urgent attention.

Friday saw me taking in a wonderful U15 League Division 1 Final in Mohill and I came away enthused by the quality of young footballers on show but delve a little deeper away from the showpiece of a County Final and you see St Mary's Kiltoghert and Annaduff quite a distance ahead of the other teams at this age group and that's got to be a worry.

Karl Foley, who stepped down as manager after the game, spoke of the need to start S&C earlier for Leitrim’s young players but also talked of how his squad had lost five potential players to rugby. Foley wasn’t attacking rugby but just highlighting that if Leitrim GAA is to compete, they need absolutely everybody on board - although I’m sure other sports might make the same claim and I'd know, having seen quite a few talented athletes, male and female, lost to Gaelic football down through the years!

S&C was also a topic on Andy Moran’s mind after his Senior team ended up with five U20 players seeing action against Kildare. His words came from a slightly different place, highlighting how the work of the last three years is starting to bear fruit and how those young players can now see a clear pathway to being able to compete with other counties.

It's a process that takes time, perhaps why Foley wants Leitrim players to get an earlier start but the evidence is there on the field. The power that Kildare possessed to brush past Leitrim's challenge in the final ten minutes was the same physicality  that Down had in spades against the Minors, albeit against a Leitrim team with at least a third of whom are underage against next year - a hurdle too far at an age when physical maturity counts for so much!

S&C mightn't seem as quite as  important in the Ladies game as it is in the men's game but  that's  down to our understanding of the term, equating S&C with muscle size and pure brute strength. It is about that certainly but it is also about aerobic endurance, the ability to endure and administer physical contact but if you witnessed the extraordinary energy levels and running power of Jonny Garrity's Ladies squad, you see the undoubted power of S&C.

This was the big shock of the weekend, or was it? Tyrone may be heading to Division 1 next year but they've shipped a few losses to teams they should be beating out the gate and Leitrim's goal scoring power always gives them a chance. You'd  wonder did they take Leitrim for granted, playing not one but two rounds of Club games the previous weekend?

THE LAST POINT: LEITRIM ENJOY THEIR DAY IN THE SUN

Whatever it was, Tyrone, with some outrageously talented footballers in Sorcha Gormley and Maria Canavan,  couldn't match the repeatable running power of Leitrim, the sheer number of high quality sprints those wearing Green & Gold made was mind-boggling while it's fair to say that the more physical game plan was in Leitrim's favour, their love of contact was something Tyrone  couldn't cope with.

It wouldn't have taken much for Tyrone to force a draw but there was an inevitability about Leitrim's win, a sense that they'd go to the bottom of the well in pursuit of victory as they played with a raw intensity and drive that the Ulster women were unable to counter.

It's early days yet and I'm not one for losing the run of myself  but such was the power of their performances, I'd start checking out the odds on Leitrim lifting the Mary Quinn Cup later this year!