Football league semi-finals: where else in the world of competitive sport is the post-semi-final reaction to a national title so insouciant?

"It's not our long-term ambition this year" – Dublin manager Jim Gavin.

“Ah well, we went out to win the game but I suppose it’s in the mindset of players that it’s not the most important thing, particularly for us when the championship’s only down the line” – Donegal’s Neil McGee.

“I suppose the biggest thing we have to realise is that this is league football. It’s a whole different ball game going into the championship,” – Monaghan’s Conor McManus.

Only Brian Cuthbert, the Cork manager, felt free to comment on his side's match against Donegal without relentlessly contextualising the competition.

There was also further evidence that the GAA public is less than agog with the recently re-introduced semi-finals, now in their fourth year, as a paltry enough attendance (20,013) turned out for Sunday’s double bill.

Whatever about supporters, teams love semi-finals even if they’re not hugely exercised about the outcome. Former Kerry manager Jack O’Connor said that the attraction was partly to secure additional, knock-out fixtures and partly to get a run or two in Croke Park at an early stage of the season.

O’Connor practised what he preached and each of the three All-Irelands won under his baton, were tuned up with league success the previous spring. If his teams didn’t win the league, they didn’t win the championship.

Contenders

There will be interest in this year’s final if only because Cork and Dublin have been the best two teams in Division One but the season has also maintained the recent trend of a surprisingly small number of contenders at the top level of the football league.

By next season it will be seven years since anyone except Dublin or Cork have won the competition. In that time, there have been 12 finalists and all but two of them have been Dublin, Cork or Mayo.

There has been a shift in emphasis this decade and doing the double has become less common.

The achievement has overwhelmingly occurred in the first season of the relevant management teams – five times out of seven in the modern (calendar-year and qualifiers) era.

What have we learned from this year’s Division One (although Donegal came close last September, All-Ireland champions haven’t emerged from outside the top division since 2002)? More importantly what have the counties learned?

There are different approaches to the league for teams with All-Ireland aspirations. The shock-and-awe campaign works best for teams on the way up.

Tyrone in 2003, Kerry 12 months later and Dublin in 2013 were all teams under new management and determined to make an impact and all went through league and championship unbeaten.

Then there is the redemptive: often this involves teams who have lost an All-Ireland final or the title itself the previous year and Kerry (2006 and 2009) and Cork in 2010 typify this category.

Although it strictly applies to Dublin in 2013, the team was under new management and so better represents the first approach.

There is also the category, best labelled “indifferent”.

This is where the particular county places no major importance on qualifying for the knock-out stages.

Maybe this is a bit too retrospective but there is evidence that both Jim McGuinness’s Donegal team and Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s Kerry side have been content to play longer games.

Mindful of distractions

Ulster

teams with early championship draws are certainly mindful of distractions and Fitzmaurice has for two of his leagues been juggling with injuries to key players.

There’s no real anomaly between his attitude and that of his predecessor. The priority for both was simply to get Kerry into the best position for the summer.

"They do whatever it takes," as Billy Morgan once sighed when asked what he thought the neighbours were up to in a particular year.

This year Cork and Dublin are in the first category, on missions of redemption.

Both had unhappy experiences in the championship last year, which has evidently persuaded them to take the business of defence more seriously.

Interestingly though, the nuclear reaction which ultimately atomised Cork’s season last year may well have come in the league when Dublin took their best shots before turning a 10-point deficit into a seven-point win in just under half an hour.

That semi-final setback may explain Brian Cuthbert’s more focused response to beating Donegal at the weekend.

He emphasised how hard it had been “to pick up the pieces” after the Dublin defeat 12 months ago. So, Cork actually have unfinished business in the league.

Sounds like a candidate for who wants it most.

smoran@irishtimes.com