All-Ireland cham­pi­ons Kerry will square off against National League Divi­sion 1 cham­pi­ons Donegal in the plum roun­done tie of the All-Ire­land senior foot­ball cham­pi­on­ship.

It’s Jack O’Con­nor versus Jim McGuin­ness – Part III. Kerry took the ulti­mate spoils in win­ning last year’s All-Ire­land final meet­ing, while Donegal flipped the script when they met in the recent league final.

Cork­-Meath is another one that jumps off the page, not just for a rich rivalry that will always evoke memor­ies of the counties lock­ing horns at Croke Park in the late 1980s, but for the fresh twist to the rivalry, with the pair meet­ing in this year’s Divi­sion 2 league final.

West­meath meet­ing Cavan means that Dermot McCabe takes his side to Mullingar to face the county he man­aged last year.

There’s another rematch, with Dub­lin and Louth due to face off again after Dub­lin dethroned the Lein­ster hold­ers at the week­end. All pro­vin­cial final­ists will have home advant­age.

The Mun­ster and Con­nacht finals will be played on the week­end of May 23/24. The Lein­ster and Ulster final­ists will be in action on the week­end of May 30/31. The eight win­ners of the Round 1 ties will be drawn against each other in Round 2A.

The four win­ners from this stage pro­gress to the All-Ire­land SFC quarter-finals. The eight losers will be drawn against each other in Round 2B. The four losers at this stage will exit the Cham­pi­on­ship.

Okay, first the upsides to the All-Ire­land draw. Kerry versus Donegal, in Kil­lar­ney, is box­of­fice. The back­story of last year’s All-Ire­land final, and then Donegal flip­ping to script to rout the Sam Maguire Cup hold­ers in the Divi­sion 1 National League final, means that selling tick­ets for this one will be easy.

Cork-Meath also excites, pit­ting this year’s Divi­sion 2 league final­ists together again after they served up an excit­ing Croke Park finale which Meath won.

Armagh will meet Derry in the sole all-Ulster clash, while Ulster final­ists Mon­aghan have been drawn to face a Mayo side still hurt­ing after a Con­nacht exit.

And that’s just four of the eight ties that all have something going for them. Taken in isol­a­tion, there is much to look for­ward to.

The round-robin format for the top 16 teams that used to be in place was ditched because of the lack of jeop­ardy and the design flaw of three teams from each group of four pro­gress­ing. There is cer­tainly more jeopardy to this format.

That pro­vin­cial final­ists have home advant­age lends a bit more street cred to the pro­vin­cial com­pet­i­tions.

And yet. There are so many ele­ments to the GAA’s unique and con­vo­luted Cham­pi­on­ship format that make the head hurt. Like the draw for an All-Ire­land series being done before the pro­vin­cial finals.

Actu­ally, win­ning your pro­vin­cial title doesn’t come with any bene­fit or draw secur­ity.

But because counties don’t want the logist­ical head­aches that come with try­ing to arrange accom­mod­a­tion or all of the things involved in an away tie – at short notice – this com­prom­ise of put­ting the cart before the horse in terms of the draw was agreed.

So Armagh, fresh from put­ting on an exhib­i­tion against Down, didn’t even get 24 hours to savour the run-in to an Ulster final. Just to wipe the smile off their face, they were drawn against Derry – 2024 Divi­sion 1 National League cham­pi­ons and Ulster cham­pi­ons of 2022 and 2023 – in round one of the All-Ire­land series.

Try and explain to any inno­cent bystander how Down aren’t one of the 16 teams. They topped the group stage of Divi­sion 3 of the National Foot­ball League on 12 points.

West­meath fin­ished just out­side the two pro­mo­tion spots on eight points. Down went on to beat Wex­ford in the Croke Park final – and then pro­duced the res­ult of the 2026 Cham­pi­on­ship in beat­ing Divi­sion 1 league cham­pi­ons Donegal in Ulster.

West­meath beat Long­ford (pro­moted from Divi­sion 4) and two Divi­sion 2 teams in Meath and Kil­dare in reach­ing a Lein­ster final.

But des­pite being in an entirely dif­fer­ent province, and hav­ing a lower league stand­ing, their pro­gress to a Lein­ster final cost Down a place in the Sam Maguire Cup, and releg­ated them to the second-tier Tail­teann Cup.

It would make more sense at this stage to play the pro­vin­cial cham­pi­on­ships first in the pre-sea­son slot – and sep­ar­ate them from the All-Ire­land. Let league seed­ing alone decide the 16 teams for the Sam Maguire Cup and the Tail­teann Cup.

Either league seed­ing counts and the top 16 teams as per the league make the Sam Maguire Cup – or it doesn’t.

This halfway house where league seed­ing counts – only to be super­seded down the road by a com­bin­a­tion of ran­dom res­ults in dif­fer­ent provinces – is unique to the GAA. And not in a good way.

The All-Ire­land round-robin series was only really start­ing to bed in when it was done away with. A solu­tion there would have been to allow just two teams pro­gress from a group of four, and add the required jeop­ardy.

In the mean­time, enjoy a first round of ties that looks inter­est­ing on paper – but still allow for a second chance.

It’s the draw after the draw where things will start to get really inter­est­ing.