Despite the assumption that league progress can be injurious to a team's championship ambitions, the experience of the past 10 years suggests otherwise. Although Cavan and Tyrone will note only one National Football League winner in that time has gone on to complete the double - Kerry five years ago - nine of the last 10 All-Ireland champions had reached the play-off stages of the league the previous spring.

Only Dublin in 1995 failed to reach the latter stages of the league, getting relegated to Division Two. But in the preceding years the county had reached the play-offs in nine successive years, winning the title three times.

It is interesting the most common CV for the last 10 All-Ireland winners has been defeat in the quarter-finals. Five counties have conformed to that model: Donegal (1992), Derry ('93), Down ('94), Meath ('96) and Galway ('98). This route is no longer available as the league has gone straight to semi-finals in the past two years.

Up until last year, no side that had lost a league final had even returned to contest an All-Ireland. Galway laid that statistic to rest by bouncing back from April's defeat by Mayo to lift the Sam Maguire five months later. The statistics bear out the old nostrum about learning more from defeat than from victory. A team needs a consistent run throughout the regulation stages to build confidence. After that the knock-out matches can go a few different ways:

Very badly - the wheels come off the wagon and morale plummets such as, say, happened Roscommon after the heavy defeat by Derry in the 1999 semi-final - followed a few weeks later by a last-minute defeat against Leitrim.

Too well - a team over-achieves and leaves insufficient in the tank for the championship or else fails to spot flaws that prove costly in the championship. Most league winners come into this category. Offaly in 1998 lost their Leinster crown and were destroyed by Meath a couple of weeks after winning the county's first NFL title.

Constructively - league exit comes after a competitive match and dignified defeat. A few inadequacies are earmarked for work in the weeks to come and if that happens at any stage before the final, there's generally been enough time to put things right.

Four of the All-Ireland winners who had departed at the quarter-final stage of the league attach importance to their earlier defeat. Donegal learned enough about Dublin when losing to them in Breffni Park 10 years ago to turn the tables the following September. Dublin thought they had learned everything they needed to know when robbing the league match with two late goals.

A year later Derry used the gap between their Easter defeat and the championship to work on their game and emerge a formidable force that summer. In 1996 Mayo narrowly beat Meath and allowed Seβn Boylan's young side one of the lowest-profile runs to an All-Ireland in recent times.

Another narrow defeat, this time Offaly over Galway in 1998, enabled John O'Mahony to strengthen his team and improve their shooting before embarking on a memorable summer.

The introduction of the qualifier system has thrown the comfortable, familiar rhythms of the year into disarray. Expect considerable attention to be paid in the future to how the relationship between football's two main intercounty competitions has been affected by the new structures.