Football changes for the better

In the space of just a few seconds all the years can come crashing in on top of you. Five minutes or so from the end of last Sunday's pulsating Ulster senior football final, Derry were driving forward in pursuit of the score that would keep them in this year's championship. One short cameo encapsulated their afternoon and provides a full stop to a story that has wound right through the past decade of Ulster football.

As the ball broke around midfield Henry Downey, for 10 years the indomitable centre-half-back pivot around which this Derry team has been built, swept up possession and surveyed the scene. The inside line of forwards was being smothered by Armagh's zonal defending and Downey looked for a shorter pass. Eventually Ronan Rocks, a second-half substitute, moved across to the left hand side of the field and stood in front of the massed hordes on the old Clones hill.

Downey fisted a short pass towards his team-mate. But thanks to a combination of his slight misjudgment and Rocks' failure to tune into his more senior colleague's thought patterns, the ball ran harmlessly over the sideline. This briefest of passages of play, with its central image of the old and the new failing to knit together into a coherent unit, marked the point at which Derry reached the end of this particular road. They may come back but they will never look quite the same again.

This has been a heartening Ulster championship, probably the best since the early 1990s when Down, Derry and Donegal strode confidently into the national spotlight. It has also been a championship of considerable flux and change. The complexion of Ulster football at the end of July is markedly different to that of just three months ago and the game here is greatly enriched for that.

The end of term report sees some of the traditional high achievers standing in the corner wearing dunce's caps, with their places at the prize-giving ceremony taken by those who many said would never make anything of themselves. Like most other aspects of life here, Ulster football may be perplexing and unpredictable but it is never ever dull.

Armagh - Last year they were welcomed as a breath of fresh air. This year they have earned respect with the way they picked themselves back up after that calamitous August afternoon with Meath. They way they ambled through the league and honed in instead on the period between June and September suggests the management is learning along the way as well. Any concerns about an over-reliance on Diarmuid Marsden were dispelled last weekend and further back both sets of brothers - the McEntees and the McNultys - have matured into top-drawer performers.

Antrim - Everybody's second team and the one which boasted the most potent set of forwards in this year's championship. In many ways this has been the easy bit. A championship win of any hue after such a long wait was always going to generate a momentum of its own. The challenge will be to build something much more solid on that foundation. Next year's draw could be crucial to their continued rude health.

Cavan - Winners of this year's award for getting match tactics comprehensively and embarrassingly wrong. Their attempt to rough Derry up would have been misguided even for a big team. For a side boasting at least three small forwards, it was footballing insanity. It was also a world away from the football for which the county has been lauded.

Derry - For years the received wisdom is that the county should have picked up at least two more All-Irelands to add to 1993 but the more stark reality is that on the big days - and last Sunday was just one more example - they were simply not good enough. The sight of Eamonn Coleman riding off into the sunset makes the football world a blander place. It is probably safe to predict that he will not be applying for a public relations job at Croke Park.

Donegal - Managerless and fairly directionless. Fermanagh's win in Ballybofey signals Donegal's slide down the Ulster pecking order. The weary call at times like these is for the umpteenth return of Brian McEniff, but the great man knows as well as anyone that the time has come to start looking forward instead of wistfully over the shoulder. It could be a long trek back to respectability.

Down - The prognosis for the patricians of Ulster football is just as gloomy, brightened only by the prospect of some new models rolling off the production line of last year's All-Ireland winning minor team. The occasional encouraging showing in recent years has tended to paper over the cracks and the more fundamental structural problems were exposed by Antrim. The average age of the team is acceptable but the entire set-up has a stale and static feel to it. Back to the drawing board.

Fermanagh - Along with Antrim, the obvious beneficiaries of the rising tide in Ulster. To be fair, their impressive summer was less of a surprise given that they have been edging closer to the big boys for three or four years now. They are blessed with some fantastic forwards and Rory Gallagher's chipped goal against Donegal has been the highlight of the year so far. Defensively, though, they have been nowhere near as impressive and they were simply not strong enough to stand up to Armagh in their semi-final. The now departed Pat King has taken Fermanagh a long way. The question is how much further they can go.

Tyrone - There are sporting truisms, it seems, that will always be with us. England have no left-footed footballers, nobody likes Nick Faldo, and Tyrone do not have players who are big enough for the modern intercounty game. This may be an over-simplification of the problems facing Tyrone, but it was the obvious difference between the sides in their defeat by Armagh. Delve a little deeper and you will find that it has engendered a lack of self-confidence that no amount of under-21 titles will improve. As with Down, and to a lesser extent Derry, things may yet get worse before they get better.

Monaghan - Alphabetically and pretty much every other way, bottom of the pile. While Antrim and Fermanagh, for so long their neighbours in the football slow lane, have accelerated off into the distance, Monaghan have been left spluttering in the dust. In the short term, they will hope that Sean McCague's next innovation is a handicapping system.