The 2013 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship was the 127th edition of the GAA's premier inter-county Gaelic football tournament, played between 31 counties of Ireland (excluding Kilkenny), London and New York.

[3][4][5] They went on to reach the Connacht Final which they lost to Mayo, before progressing to play at Croke Park in a Round 4 All-Ireland Qualifier at which point they exited after the longest Championship run in their history.

[6][7] Hawk-Eye was introduced for Championship matches at Croke Park and was first used to confirm that Offaly substitute Peter Cunningham's attempted point had gone wide 10 minutes into the second half of a game against Kildare.

[8][9] 2013 also brought the first Friday night game in the history of the Championship – a first round qualifier between Carlow and Laois.

Syl Doyle of Wexford had also chosen to step away the previous January.

Their replacements were David Gough, who refereed the 2013 All-Ireland U21 final, of Meath and Fergal Kelly of Longford.

Padraig Hughes of Armagh remained injured after running into Eamonn Doherty and collapsing during live play in the NFL Division 1 clash between Donegal and Dublin in Ballybofey.

Mayo’ had their easiest win over Galway in championship history and in an odd coincidence the scoreline is the same as when Galway inflicted their largest defeat on Mayo in the 1956 Connacht Q’Final, 17 points being the difference in both games The All-Ireland Senior Football Championship of 2013 was run on a provincial basis as usual.

It was a knockout tournament with pairings drawn at random in the respective provinces – there were no seeds.

The qualifiers gave teams defeated in the provincial championships another chance at winning the All-Ireland title.

Round 1 (8 matches): the sixteen teams who failed to reach a provincial semi-final entered the qualifiers at this stage (New York do not compete).

Round 2 (8 matches): the eight teams who failed to progress from their provincial semi-finals entered the qualifiers at this stage.

Round 4 (4 matches): the four teams who lost their provincial finals entered the qualifiers at this stage.

Quarter-finals: (4 matches) the four teams from round 4 of the qualifiers were paired against the four provincial winners.

The first round consisted of all teams that failed to reach their respective provincial semi-finals.

[29] Dublin's Michael Darragh MacAuley was named as the Sunday Game player of the year.

[30] On 8 November, the All Star football team for 2013 was announced and the players were presented with their awards at Croke Park.

List of nominees In December 2013, SAM 13 a double DVD was released containing highlights of the 2013 football championship season along with full match coverage of the final and Dublin v Kerry semi-final.