GAELIC GAMES:The four league divisions, re-established in 2008, represent an accurate statement of hierarchy, writes SEÁN MORAN

I REMEMBER watching a county captain lifting the National Football League trophy and declaiming: “Who says this is a secondary competition?” In as much as the question wasn’t rhetorical the most obvious answer was, “well, you actually,” as the player in question had expressed that very opinion to me in private conversation earlier in the year.

That was in the old days when not alone was there frequently no connection between spring success and championship but at times there appeared to be a disjunction, with the winning county leaving something of itself in the process of gathering early silverware – so that particular captain might simply have been trying to convince himself.

That is no longer the case. Not alone is there an all-too-evident link between league and championship but it is increasingly the case that the four divisions, re-established in 2008, do indeed represent an accurate statement of hierarchy.

Of course there are always anomalies. An old-school practitioner like Mick O’Dwyer, who has always prioritised the summer, was particularly frustrated when the GAA decided to create the first linkage between league and championship by shutting Wicklow out of the All-Ireland qualifiers as a Division Four team.

And when that prohibition was lifted O’Dwyer led Wicklow on their best championship run in history last year despite not having been moved to drive them towards promotion in the spring. But the overall picture tells us that the divisional rankings are not false.

As Kildare manager Kieran McGeeney put it during Monday’s launch of the NFL when asked about the distinction between the top two divisions: “There’s probably not that big of a difference but the top eight teams are in Division One and probably have that mental edge over the teams in Division Two.”

Increasingly Division One football is a long-term tenancy. Kerry, Tyrone, Galway and Mayo have been consistently there in the past decade, with only Kerry dropping out briefly because of a particularly bad All-Ireland hangover.

The current Division One contains 75 per cent of all All-Ireland semi-finalists since the introduction of the qualifier series nine years ago – and over 60 per cent of all quarter-finalists.

In a way this isn’t surprising. The old rhythms of the football season have changed from staccato bursts of activity and big, winner-takes-all championship collisions. There is now a need for more sustained performance throughout the year.

Since the turn of the century, the league season is no longer scattered incoherently over seven months with a two-month break in the middle. The qualifiers have smoothed the path between league and championship in that teams don’t face sudden death in the early months of the summer.

For instance in the 10 years 1991-2000, seven of the NFL winners would have been able to avail of the qualifiers potentially to rebuild their season after defeat in the provincial championships. Of the remaining three, Cork (1999) and Dublin (1993) lost to the eventual All-Ireland champions in final and semi-final respectively and Kerry won the double in 1997 (albeit with a competitive schedule in the four months between NFL and All-Ireland finals that comprised of Tipperary, Clare and Cavan).

In the following 10 years five eventual All-Ireland winners would already have appeared in the same year’s league final. Another two league finalists, Armagh (2005) and Kerry (2008), went on to make a substantial challenge for the Sam Maguire some months later.

Mickey Harte’s Tyrone did much to set the tone for the changed perspective. Uninhibitedly proclaiming his belief in winning every match and in the maintenance of short, sharp training sessions and no challenge matches, he had this to say the day after the county’s first All-Ireland in 2003.

“Training has been about quality rather than quantity, something we’d preached a long time. I think it’s great to show that you can get to All-Ireland level training just two nights a week and one game at the weekend.

“The other interesting statistic is that yesterday was our 21st match and we never played a single challenge in the entire year. I think it’s very valuable to be playing in the National League up to the concluding stages.”

His Kerry counterpart, Jack O’Connor, followed suit in relation to the spring competition when taking up the reins in his county a year later. O’Connor has now, like Harte, won three All-Irelands and in each year achieved the double, racking up the league in April.

In fact O’Connor was on the record bitterly regretting the spinning roulette wheel finish to the 2005 league regulation schedules, which saw Kerry edged out of the semi-finals on scoring difference because of a late point kicked by Tyrone in Killarney. He felt it left his team short of competitive matches and ultimately impacted on their summer by hampering their championship preparation and depriving them of the comforting routine of the previous year.

Those last-day dramas in which league positioning swivels around crazily every time a point is scored in some distant venue has also helped condition the main contenders. When McGeeney speaks of mental toughness it is precisely those types of circumstances he has in mind.

It mightn’t break your heart to lose out in the long run although, as O’Connor believed, the consequences can be profound but every manager wants to see his players perform under pressure and pull out a result.

When the starter’s pistol goes at the weekend to signal the start of the 2010 season, there will be dozens of plans, ambitions and dreams spinning through the minds of managements and players. Not everyone has the same agenda so results can be misleading but the trend is meaningful.

It’s not necessarily an out-and-out ambition to win the league that counts but the process is vital, doing your best in the varying circumstances.

When McGeeney was asked about the importance of the NFL for teams he said that whereas you don’t fall to pieces because you lose a match you want to test the players and see what they’ve got. Then you move on, regardless of the result.

As he put it succinctly: “You try and make it important for them.”