In an effort to fill the long void between league and championship the Leitrim footballers have joined a previously elite list of counties and designed a foreign training trip. Tomorrow the panel travels to Cyprus for a week of warm-weather training and team bonding, a move that represents a whole new level of commitment in Leitrim football.

For many of the teams not involved in the play-off stages of the National League the coming weeks have created a sort of football limbo. The hiatus of between four and 11 weeks before championship action is not universally greeted as a welcome rest and has left some county managers going to extra lengths to fill the void.

Eight counties from across the divisions are looking forward to at least one more competitive game in the coming weeks. Galway are the only Connacht representative in the play-off stages, whereas Ulster have three (Tyrone, Down and Donegal) and Leinster and Munster have two each (Offaly and Kildare, and Kerry and Limerick respectively). Those Division One and Two semi-finals take place on Sunday week, April 18th.

That leaves the majority of counties facing a lay-off of various lengths, ranging from the four weeks before Mayo start their Connacht campaign on May 2nd against New York, to the 11 weeks before Leitrim start the same campaign against either Sligo or Roscommon on June 20th.

In previous years Leitrim might have used that period to rest players from the exertions of the league. But manager Declan Rowley, who is now in his third year in charge of the senior footballers, figured a long way back that this was the time to get more productive.

"This is something I felt Leitrim needed to do for a while now," he says. "In fact it was when we were in New York for the championship last year that we first had three or four days together as a team, and I felt that created a great bond. It was around that time I mooted the idea of bringing the team away and the New York supporters club came on board with some backing and along with the county board set up a very attractive package.

"Part of our problem is that the players we have coming to training are travelling long distances to get there, and are rushing off afterwards. So we don't really get the opportunity to discuss things in detail or chat about things the way we'd like to."

Rowley has already put much thought into the trip and is intent on getting as much benefit as possible from the week in Cyprus: "We do have a lot of interesting things lined up, such a team talks and video analysis and the like. And it's very much an intensive training week. I know some people will still see this as a holiday but we're definitely taking it very seriously.

"In fact we plan on training twice a day for four of the days, starting at 8.0 a.m. But we will break it up a little to ensure the players get a bit of a rest. And I honestly think it will be good for the morale of the team. We'll be able to fully set out our objectives for the weeks ahead. It's a big investment for the county but hopefully it will be worth while."

In these days of increasingly professional demands on players he also believes the management are obliged to reflect that commitment. Most of the players travelling to Cyprus are giving up a week of their holidays to make the trip.

"I do believe that weaker football counties such as Leitrim deserve something like this," adds Rowley.

"You do have counties that reward players when they win a provincial title or whatever, but there's no reason why it shouldn't work the other way, and give the players some reward for trying to get there."

Leitrim will still head into a nine-week lull before the championship opener on June 20th, and yet Rowley is confident the coming training break will set them up nicely for a progressive countdown to the championship.

"Club matches will have started up here in May and that will be a bit of a distraction, but we'll get a couple of challenge matches in there, and just try to build further on our fitness. And in a way we'll be glad of that bit of breathing space, in that it will allow us to go behind closed doors and get ourselves as well prepared as we can for the championship."

Already making use of the long interval are Longford, who themselves departed for Cyprus on Sunday evening just hours after the defeat to Dublin that ended their life in Division One B. They start their Leinster championship campaign against Carlow on May 9th.

And Armagh, one of the pioneers of the training trip this time of the year, are in the process of finalising a week-long trip, mostly likely to the Spanish resort of La Manga, to help fill their seven-week break before the championship outing against Monaghan on May 23rd. That game, fixed for Clones, is a repeat of last year's start-up that ended with major surprise when Monaghan emerged as winners.

According to county secretary Patrick Nugent, the first week in May is being targeted.

"There is time there now for the team to get away," he said, "but we were always going to wait until after the league finished up before finalising anything."