League success could be stepping stone for Derry

THE TROUBLE with the National Football League is that you just don't know. Everyone's aware that 'it's only the league' and that 'in a few weeks no-one will remember who won it' and all the other phrases that trip off the tongue at this time of the year.

But we don't know its relevance, its implications for the coming championship and that's part of its enduring attraction, like ticking an annual true or false questionnaire.

In the past there was a complete contradiction between doing well in the spring and winning the All-Ireland. During the last decade only Kerry in 1997 managed to achieve the double and that - in those pre-qualifier days - required just two matches, against Tipperary and Clare, between the NFL final on May 4th and the All-Ireland semi-final three and a half months later on August 24th.

For other counties less favoured by their provincial timetables, the effort of coming down from a league success and getting back up again in the space of a couple of weeks for a sudden-death championship match against the neighbours frequently proved too much.

The majority of NFL winners in the 1990s didn't add even their provincial titles within the months that followed and only one beaten finalist, Derry in 1998, went on to win their province - ironically given that the county didn't manage that follow-up in any of the three years during which they had lifted the NFL.

Modern training methods, designed to provide optimum fitness levels over longer periods rather than staccato bursts of intensity for a few matches stretched over four months, have been the context for league campaigns for most of this decade.

In the four years 2003-06 there was a strong correlation between league and championship success.

Tyrone and Kerry, twice, did the double and in 2005 winners Armagh became Ulster champions and lost their All-Ireland semi-final on the last kick to Tyrone, the ultimate champions, who themselves had qualified for the last four of the league.

In 2003 it was a Division One match in Killarney that showcased more attractively than the following summer's All-Ireland final Tyrone's superiority over Kerry, as their mobility and athleticism cut a swathe through the home side. Derry will be hoping that last Sunday proves a similar augury.

Paddy Crozier's side will certainly be hoping to improve on the county's dismal conversion rate from league to championship. This was Derry's fifth NFL title in 20 years and so far none of them have been followed by even an Ulster title.

It can be argued the win of 1992 was a clear precursor of the All-Ireland title a year later or that the back-to-back Leagues in 1995-96 came just in advance of the 1998 Ulster championship, the county's last, but by 2000 the county's then manager, the late Eamonn Coleman, was sounding the warning bells as soon as the title had been won.

"We can't get carried away with this. How many teams have won a National League and then got beaten in the first round of the Ulster championship? It was always about the Ulster championship, that's what we trained for. It we get beaten by Down or Antrim, no one will remember Clones on June 20th." However they still lost to Armagh in the Ulster final.

Even in the aftermath of Sunday's immensely heartening win over Kerry centre forward Barry McGoldrick made much the same point. It's almost as if you have to distance yourself from having won the competition. The reticence partly comes from last year's experience when, having won a first league title, Donegal went on to have a poor summer while beaten finalists Mayo had an even worse one. Although precedent was encouraging for Donegal there was scepticism that their success would necessarily speed them in the direction of the All-Ireland. And that's how it happened.

Taking an educated shot at what this means for Derry, the inclination is it will be a step along the way to a serious championship challenge. Next month's opening match with Donegal is straight out of the scripts that have haunted the county previously although more positively they have never lost a first round tie as NFL holders.

Attitudes to the league have shifted amongst the public as well as amongst teams and contenders. In a decade that has seen massive crowds at a couple of showpiece divisional matches in Croke Park the average attendance at finals has been 23,710.

Former Director General Liam Mulvihill made the point at last year's launch that the competition now starts in a greater welter of excitement than gets stirred at its conclusion.

It's not really a matter of what competing attractions are available although the two lowest attendances clashed with European Cup rugby semi-finals. Some of that trouble was brought on the GAA by itself in attempting to find a way around the problem. The tea-time throw-in in Limerick two years ago is a prime example but to be fair to the GAA, they're not going to get the notoriously selective Kerry support base to turn out anywhere far away from Tralee or Killarney.

Making bad worse has been the opposition. Galway, who have twice faced Kerry in NFL finals, don't have easily moved supporters either, as the 7,598 crowd that turned up in the Gaelic Grounds two years ago indicates. Even when the 2004 final was staged at Croke Park the counties barely broke 28,000.

Derry trainer John McCloskey's critical comments about Parnell Park's lack of facilities for players were well made and the proper audit and preparation of venues for matches like the weekend's is something the new Player Welfare official at Croke Park could take up in the future.

But it's hard to argue with Joe Brolly's comments to Des Cahill on RTE Radio last Monday when he said the atmosphere at the venue had been excellent for what was an exciting match. The 9,732 crowd would of course have been lost in Croke Park.

Remember the weekend's pairing has the distinction, if that's the word, of having drawn the poorest attendance, 35,457, at an All-Ireland football semi-final this decade.

But choice of venue has an influence. The average attendance at Croke Park for NFL finals is considerably greater than the average elsewhere: 30,435 against 13,622. In other words opting for down-scale capacities is a bit self-fulfilling. The GAA at large needs to decide whether it wants the NFL final to have the status of a Croke Park final or the atmosphere of a tightly-packed crowd. Who knows which is better? And as all the counties hit their turbo-championship buttons, in all probability who cares?

smoran@irish-times.ie