Tom Humphriessuggests the Ulster superpowers are in decline but Tyrone might just stay in the big time - out of habit
Every few years or so when the stars are in alignment and certain superpowers are in recession a sense gathers in the world of football that there is a handy All-Ireland to be had for some team or other. Ulster's discernible waning heightens that feeling this summer.
There is little doubt that the Ulster pulse is beating more faintly right now than at any time since the turn of the millennium. Last year's failure to send a team from the province to the semi-final stages of the All-Ireland series was followed by a league campaign which suggested crisis in a couple of the leading houses.
The challenge which virtually every county except Kerry have to face at some time or other is renewal. Success has been a long time coming and Ulster campaigns are especially attritional.
The province having produced two sides of exceptional dedication and commitment knew perhaps that the levels which Tyrone and Armagh were bringing to the game meant retreading would be necessary sooner rather than later.
Armagh, with six Ulster titles from their period of ascendancy, look at last to have succumbed. Tyrone could still surprise us with the quality of their summer challenge.
What is odd is that, after a period of such wealth in Ulster football, there is little sign of anybody else apart from Donegal kicking on to a higher level.
Not only should the sight of Tyrone and Armagh's adventures be stirring souls in rival counties, but in Derry and Down there should be some dividend from the boost the game got back in the early to mid-1990s. Down won an All-Ireland minor title two seasons ago and reached an under-21 final the same year. They play Division three football next winter.
Looking at the province from the top down there is a ruling troika and then the rest. Armagh look at best transitional and at worst spent. Tyrone still have an injury hangover from last summer's biblical plague of affliction and, of the sides in the vanguard of the revolution back in the early 1990s, Derry and Down are still slumped. Within the province perhaps only Donegal can be said to be walking the sort of upward form-line that might lead to a breakthrough.
Elsewhere, Ulster offers the proof that a rising tide doesn't necessarily lift all vessels.
Donegal, following their league exploits, have plenty of takers at the bookmakers. They have the best of teams and the worst of draws however. The path to an Ulster final is a minefield and Brian McIver's greatest task will be to keep his side's gaze level and steady.
A first round win over their long-time oppressors Armagh could trigger such a return to old style Donegal forms of celebration that there won't be enough footballers left in the county to replace those dropped from the panel in the purge. McIver has to calm his troops because then in all likelihood there's Tyrone.
Still, Donegal have the players and, unusually for a side from the county, they've the physique for a style which doesn't involve wearing the shine off the football with endless handpassing. The return of Kevin Cassidy, Colm McFadden and Brendan Devenney will add some muscle and some cutting edge to a team which should have reached an All-Ireland semi-final (at least) last year.
For Donegal, perhaps taking the long way around to achievement will be necessary again. In Ballybofey, they should beat an Armagh side who are showing belated signs of mortality and who have lost the McEntee twins.
For the last couple of years Armagh have resembled those cartoon characters who keep on moving straight ahead even when they have gone out over the edge of a cliff. This summer, as in the league, they may start to feel gravity.
For Armagh, the evidence of this year's league and last summer's exit to Kerry is that the mind is still willing, but the flesh is jaded. The product of the 2004 under-21 success perhaps need another year or so of percolation before being strong enough to satisfy local taste.
Tyrone are on a different course. Having established a pattern wherein significant success is followed by a year of trauma they will expect much of themselves. The winter was devoted to experimentation and expanding a panel which was stretched to it's limits last year and despite the customary (though controversial) romp through the McKenna Cup the results were mixed.
Mickey Harte has announced that he will be working off a panel of 38 players for the summer. It is an ambitious plan even in a county where the injury-rate is so high. Keeping the fringe players in a panel of 30 happy is a decent enough trick for most managers to pull off.
Given the odd circumstances which pertained last year, this could be said to be our first glimpse of the real Tyrone minus Peter Canavan. A player who meant so much in terms of experience and totemic presence is never easily replaced. Certainly with Canavan gone if the season transpires to be another without the cursed Brian McGuigan Tyrone will struggle. Even if McGuigan can recover fitness and form there are concerns over how the performances of Stephen O'Neill and Owen Mulligan have dipped. Mickey Harte will be hoping for a general solution.
Of the new blood Colm Kavanagh, Kelvin Hughes and Niall Gormley impressed over the winter and Tyrone will be encouraged not by the memory of three league defeats but of the opening night of the league in Croke Park in front of 80,000 when they beat Dublin from memory. Their reserves of experience may yet see them to another provincial title.
Apart from Tyrone, Armagh and Donegal, no one else in the province heads into the summer in great fettle. The first-round opener between Down and Cavan is heady with undertones of collapsed superpowers. Under Ross Carr it's fair to say Down have yet to spark and failure to win any of seven NFL games, an achievement which ushers them into Division Three, hasn't been ameliorated by injury to Ambrose Rogers and Liam Doyle and a fortnight's break for players to return to their clubs. Donal Keoghan's Cavan side had a considerably less traumatic time of things and with home advantage will be expecting to advance.
Elsewhere, there are positive noises from Antrim, but some doubts as to whether Jody Gormley's side have enough about them to take Derry at Casement even withoutKevin McGuckin. Monaghan will be feisty as usual and play some nice football. Fermanagh's renaissance in Charlie Mulgrew's first year is a distant memory.
It's an odd juncture for the game. At the time of the "puke football" slur the games more politically correct advocates were at pains to point out that in Ulster everything was being done correctly and cerebrally.
It was too. But the trick is always knowing what your next trick is. The province needs to send somebody to an All-Ireland final this year if the northern mystique is to be maintained.
Football summers are organic things though and teams grow into them. With McGuigan back and the smell of new mown grass in their nostrils, Tyrone might just stay in the big time out of habit.