Amid all the hand-wringing about one-sided provincial finals - on Saturday at least - Pat Spillane pointed to what he regarded as one of the bright spots of the weekend: the Tailteann Cup.

The months preceding the inaugural competition witnessed doom-laden prophecies about player apathy and large-scale opt-outs, as well as a great deal of grumbling about an alleged paucity of pre-publicity.

But, according to Spillane, the early signs are that the Tailteann Cup is beginning to gather some momentum.

After the preliminary rounds, the tournament shot into a higher gear at the weekend, with Carlow - utterly abject throughout 2022 - shocking Tipp in Netwatch Cullen Park, and Andy Moran's Leitrim overcoming Antrim in Carrick.

"The Tailteann Cup is starting to be a huge success. It's going to be a huge success," Spillane told the RTÉ GAA podcast.

"When I saw the Carlow players celebrating after that victory, I said 'that's it! That's brilliant'.

"Take Leitrim and Sligo, one of them is going to get into a Tailteann Cup semi-final. For one of them, it will be their fifth championship game of the year.

"Go back through the records, when did Leitrim or Sligo ever play five championship games in the one year? Probably never, maybe once? (Sligo played six en route to All-Ireland quarter-final in 2002)

"Not alone that but they'll be playing that fifth game of the championship in Croke Park and it will be live on RTÉ television.

"I've looked at the teams still in it. No one has dropped out. They're committing, they're training hard, they've full-strength teams.

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"Carlow, who were humiliated in the league - one victory against Waterford - who were humiliated in the Leinster championship. The easy option for Niall Carew and his players was to say, 'ah, feck this anyway...'

"They said, look, we'll give it a crack, this is our level. They trained hard, they had challenge games and they mightn't win another game but yesterday was their day in the sun. And I thought, 'this Tailteann Cup, it's good'."

Monday's draw has thrown up a couple of local derbies - perhaps unsurprisingly given the contentious north-south design of the competition - with Fermanagh colliding with their old nemesis Cavan in Brewster Park.

While Sligo - who currently boast Pat Spillane Jr in their ranks - travel to Carrick to face Leitrim. The carrot of a semi-final trip to Croker is on offer.

"Two quarter-finals in the Tailteann Cup next weekend will probably have close to full-house at Páirc Sean in Carrick-on-Shannon, the local derby Sligo and Leitrim and at Brewster Park, Fermanagh and Cavan.

"They'll be close to full-house for a quarter-final of a competition which, a couple of months ago, a lot of teams didn't want.

"It's a good positive story to take out of the weekend, rather than bashing the provincial championships. It's exactly what we didn't get in Killarney, it's a level playing field, teams of equal ability playing against each other."

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