Star-studded but stale?

“And this announcement will bring great joy to his county.”

So said Marty Morrissey as he got set to name the left half forward on this year’s Gaelic football All Star team at the gala event in Dublin last Friday week. I’m sure mine was not the only Lake County heart that skipped a beat in anticipation of this follow-up: “A great servant of St Loman’s, Mullingar and Westmeath, let’s hear it for first-time recipient, the mercurial Ronan O’Toole.”

Alas, no, and heartiest congrats to a worthy winner in Enda Smith of Roscommon, who took the slot many of us felt was a shoo-in for Paul Mannion of Kilmacud Crokes (a superb club team largely consisting of home-grown talent!) and Dublin. All maroon and white bias apart, if there was to be a surprise selection, O’Toole must surely have run Smith very close in the voting.

‘Close but no cigar’ has, sadly, been the lot of countless players of O’Toole’s ability since the All Star scheme came into being in 1971, driven by a number of top GAA journalists at the time, none more so than a man with very strong Delvin and Westmeath connections, the late Mick Dunne. Indeed, his daughters, Eileen (of RTÉ news-reading fame) and Moira, did him proud a couple of years ago with their outstanding and colourful book commemorating the Golden Jubilee of the awards.

Smith’s selection brings to nine the number of players selected on the football All Stars who had failed to qualify for a minimum of an All-Ireland quarter-final since this stage of the race for Sam was brought into play in 2001 (a year many of us strongly feel was Westmeath’s best-ever chance of reaching the Holy Grail in the big ball game).

Remarkably, an all-time great forward Peter Canavan (Tyrone) broke the mould in 2002, just a year before he lifted Sam for the Red Hand County’s inaugural triumph. ‘Peter the Great’ was followed by two of the greatest modern attackers not to even play in a final, Declan Browne (Tipperary) in 2003 and Matty Forde (Wexford) the following year.

Fermanagh defender Barry Owens in 2006 was next, prior to the Westmeath duo of Gary Connaughton and John Keane in the ‘nearly year’ that was 2008 for Tomás Ó Flatharta’s charges. Outstanding Louth midfielder Paddy Keenan (so cruelly denied a Leinster medal by Joe Sheridan’s throw-ball) and highly-rated Sligo defender Charlie Harrison, both in 2010, were the last before Smith this year.

The Boyle maestro is very much the exception to the rule in recent decades, whereas an occasional spot was found for less successful counties in bygone days. We all know that almost all the focus now is on the two All-Ireland semi-finals and the final. Daftly, eye-catching displays in one or both of the above is often enough to get on what is meant to be the team of the year, regardless of how little a candidate played in the league or early rounds of the championship, as Kieran Donaghy from the Kingdom will testify in 2014. And speaking of the league, the days of surprise NFL champions like Laois in 1986 earning two statuettes (Colm Browne and Liam Irwin) have long since disappeared.

Those of us of a certain vintage will recall something of a precursor to the All Star scheme in the mid-1960s (1963 to 1967 inclusive, to be exact) when Cú Chulainn teams were selected in both codes. Reviewing those sides six decades later shows that, like nowadays, the two All-Ireland finalists dominated the selections, but slots were found for ‘weaker county’ greats such as Wicklow ‘keeper Andy Phillips (1963) and Louth’s Frank Lynch (1964).

Sligo's magnificent scorer-in-chief Mickey Kearins made three consecutive teams from 1964 to 1966, ironically coinciding with a hat-trick of Sams for Galway, as rumour has it that the Tribesmen were more than keen to ‘sign’ the neighbouring star whose awesome display in Cusack Park versus Westmeath in November 1972 is still fresh in my mind.

Paul Barden would surely have been a widely-acceptable choice in his heyday, but Longford, who share the dubious distinction with Carlow of never having picked up an All Star in either code, had a really fine side in the mid-1960s and would certainly have had a player or two selected if the All Stars had started even half a decade earlier. Witness Sean Murray (1965) and Brendan Barden (1966) on the Cú Chulainn teams.

In hurling, similarly, the recently deceased Jimmy Duggan (Galway) in 1965 and Paddy Molloy (Offaly) in 1966, when both counties were anonymous in the small ball game, were deserving Cú Chulainn recipients.

Of course, some players from ‘big’ counties still fail to make the cut. I was present to see Michael Meehan’s incredible display in a Croke Park deluge in the 2008 quarter-final v Kerry, which even on its own merit deserved an All Star. The Caltra man is always my choice as the best footballer not to receive a statuette. Likewise, Kilkenny’s Aidan Fogarty, complete with eight hurling Celtic Crosses, and man of the match in the 2006 MacCarthy Cup final, was never handed the ultimate individual award.

Yours truly, when undertaking match reports for a very prominent national daily newspaper during the leagues, is asked to give a rating out of ten for all players on duty. It seems a pity that the views of Ordinary Joe scribes like me undertaking this task the length and breadth of Ireland can’t, even in a small way, be used as a helping hand when the selectors pick their teams late in the year.

The All Star sides are now light years away from being representative of the most consistent footballers and hurlers over a 12-month period. In fact, it is – at most – a two-month period! One suspects that Mick Dunne and co would not be at all happy the way their admirable brainwave has all turned out.