STARRY MIGHTS

Our 15 brightest performers in race for end-of-season recognition with just three Championship games to go..will the twinkle in their eye remain or fade and die?

- BY KARL O'KANE

THE Football All Stars are no longer the same All-Ireland final fest with everyone else discarded.

A new All-Ireland round robin system and more games have shaken things up, meaning that players who don't reach the decider now have a far better chance of winning a gong.

In fact, back in 2023, the first year of the round robin, Roscommon's Enda Smyth deservedly got one despite his side not even making an All-Ireland quarter-final.

In the same year, Galway captain Sean Kelly came very close too with his side losing to Mayo by a point at the same stage of the competition.

It happened again last year with Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan winning an All Star despite his side losing out to Roscommon in a preliminary quarter-final.

Beaten quarter-finalists have managed one All Star apiece in the new format, Louth's Craig Lennon (2024) and Monaghan's Conor McCarthy (2023).

A tentative pattern has been established over two seasons of the group stages, with a player apiece from the beaten prelimi-nary quarter-finalists and quar-ter-finalist winning an All Star.

This is full of little nuances.

Michael McKernan has probably been Tyrone's best player this year but isn't in due to his shoulder injury which ruled him out of the Dublin win.

Kerry did not meet a Divi-sion One team until last weekend and have been plagued by injury so have less representation than you might imagine at this stage.

Historically, there has been more weight placed on their big games than other sides, due to the lack of them. Don-egal have played a whopping nine games and have had differ-ent players step up on different days. Very few could maintain standards over that amount of Championship games.

Michael Langan, for example, has had huge moments like the goal against Monaghan at the weekend.