Ah, the first stirrings of spring and all the giddy optimism they bring. With four significant National League wins for Ulster counties last Sunday and Queen's University Belfast hosting the Sigerson Cup this weekend, this is a week which feels like the beginning of the end of a long close season that has spanned the five months since the All-Ireland final last September. The GAA sap, it can cautiously be said, is rising.
Armagh, Derry, Donegal and Tyrone can now face the heaviest period of championship training in the knowledge that the performance graph is moving tentatively upwards. Sunday's wins - three of them away from home - were welcome for a variety of reasons, not least because it was counties of the calibre of Cork, Meath, Dublin and Galway who were on the receiving end. It is laughably early to be talking about setting down championship form lines but inter-county logic holds that there is little you can do at this stage of the year beyond beating the teams that are sent out to face you. These are the months for ironing out creases.
Of the quartet, Armagh have had by far the most impressive winter. There were signs of a revival of sorts last summer in a county that has underachieved for almost two decades. Now, with new players like Paddy McKeever firmly bedded in and the renewal of the partnership of Des Mackin and Diarmuid Marsden from their minor days, that promise has been steadily built upon. A fortnight ago Offaly were dispensed of in Crossmaglen and in round five Armagh travelled to Cork to inflict the first league defeat of this campaign on the home county.
Armagh people, no doubt, will be cautious. They will also be wary of the misguided euphoria which epitomised their run to the 1977 All-Ireland final horror show and which has had a tendency to re-appear. This 1999 model, though, has a new steel and will benefit from spending the last few years learning in the foothills. Kieran McGeeney is probably the most solid centre back in Ulster while Jarlath Burns and Paul McGrane are natural midfielders. And in Diarmuid Marsden Armagh have a player who can be compared with Peter Canavan or Joe Brolly as a game-turner and a matchwinner. Add to that the imminent return of the Crossmaglen posse after the All-Ireland club final later this month and Armagh look like a county something close to the finished article. The 5 to 1 currently on offer in some quarters for an Ulster title seems the value bet in what is a conservatively-priced market.
Over-reaching expectation is always likely to be Armagh's downfall and to that end their mentors would not have been overly unhappy to hear that Donegal had broken a run of three successive defeats with victory over previously unbeaten Dublin in Ballyshannon. Armagh have a desperate need not to be favourites when the two counties lock championship horns a couple of months hence . . . a nice sequence of Donegal results would suit them just fine.
For his part, Donegal manager Declan Bonner will be relieved to have arrested the mid-winter free-fall. His side is blessed with a handful of excellent forwards but the perennial problem has been getting Tony Boyle, John Duffy, Adrian Sweeney and Brendan Devenney fit and firing on the same day. Achieving that lofty aim will occupy much of Bonner's thinking and plotting as the evenings lengthen and the championship chatter grows.
Opinions on all matters football are also specialist subjects in the neighbouring counties of Tyrone and Derry. For the first Monday morning in a long time they will have had some positive things to talk about. Derry have been toiling hard under the tutelage of Adrian McGuckian and Eamonn Coleman and a six point win over Meath in their own backyard isn't to be sniffed at. But even after an exhaustive trawl through the county and a series of trial matches, they don't seem to have unearthed the talent that looks necessary to replace some of the ageing limbs exposed by Galway last August. Tyrone made it two wins on the bounce in Galway and even allowing for the All-Ireland champions' hibernation period the nine point victory was something to chew over. Peter Canavan is now showing signs that he has come out the other side of a traumatic year and his posting at corner forward is likely to be top of the agenda at the next meeting of the Union of Corner Backs of Ireland.
Traditionally, success for Ulster counties has been closely linked to the performances of their third level colleges in the Sigerson Cup. The successes of St Mary's in 1989 and Queen's in 1990 and 1993 book-ended the All-Irelands for Down, Donegal and Derry and the competition has long been a finishing school bridging the gap between the minor and senior ranks.
There have been the usual rumblings of discontent this winter about college commitments impinging on the county set-ups, but the prevailing view is that the net influence of college is more positive than negative.
Queens will probably start as uncertain favourites, not only by virtue of their home advantage but also because they have had a good autumn and winter, lifting the Ryan Cup on the way by beating Garda in the final. Tyrone's outstanding minor of 1998, Cormac McAnallen, leads the attack supported by Fermanagh's Tom Brewster and Colm Hanratty of Armagh.
The advent of the Sigerson represents the first new shoots of the football year and the rich harvest to come. After the protracted slumbers of winter, the pitches at the Dub playing fields will be awash with budding inter-county players dreaming of returning to their counties, to a long hot summer and to harder pitches. For many of them, the real apprenticeship starts right here.
