Sunday, November 24, 2024

Football All-Stars predictions: Could Armagh earn as many as eight awards?

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The standout feature from the above selection is the absence of Kerry and Dublin players.

Dubs Fenton, O’Callaghan and Cormac Costello are among the nominees but it’s difficult to make a convincing case for any of them to be included.

Likewise, the Kingdom have the Clifford brothers plus Tom O’Sullivan and Brian O Beaglaioch nominated but while O’Sullivan could possibly sneak in at corner-back, there will be raised eyebrows if any of the other three Kerrymen make the selection.

The final tally of eight Armagh, five Galway and two Donegal perhaps looks a little unbalanced when you consider the overall national picture with not a yawning gap between the three teams and the likes of Kerry, Dublin and Mayo.

And some may say with no team clearly ahead of the rest this season, it was a year when the likes of Louth duo Sam Mulroy and Craig Lennon or perhaps even Tyrone’s Darragh Canavan could have made the All-Star line-up.

But this most subjective of exercises is fundamentally about looking at battles for individual jerseys rather than a calculation over whether a team only narrowly ahead of the rest deserves eight All-Stars.

My Football All-Stars selection

Blaine Hughes (Armagh); Johnny McGrath (Galway), Aaron McKay (Armagh), Barry McCambridge (Armagh); Dylan McHugh (Galway), Aidan Forker (Armagh), Peadar Mogan (Donegal); Paul Conroy (Galway), Ben Crealey (Armagh); Rob Finnerty (Galway), John Maher (Galway), Oisin Conaty (Armagh); Oisin Gallen (Donegal), Rian O’Neill (Armagh), Conor Turbitt (Armagh)

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