ON GAELIC GAMES:In the last eight years there has been an unarguable increase in the rate of correlation between success in spring and the championship, writes SEAN MORAN

IT’S ONLY the league? Distilled wisdom, or a succinct expression of sour grapes, fear of failure and an existential challenge to whole notion of competitive sport? The GAA’s second competition has often occupied an ambiguous place in the framework of the games. Casual denigration of the league and its associated form is part of the great national conversation about the games. That didn’t happen exclusively because of the above considerations.

It happened because there emerged a body of evidence that, far from laying the foundations for championship success, doing well in the league actually militated against it. That long sequence of 15 years between Meath’s double in 1988 and Tyrone’s in 2003 featured only two league and championship successes, both achieved by Munster counties greatly facilitated by the straightforward and pre-qualifiers route to an All-Ireland.

On top of that, seven teams by my reckoning followed winning the NFL with grossly disappointing championships (Dublin ’91, Derry ’92, ’95 and ’96, Offaly ’98, Mayo ’01 and Tyrone ’02). Small wonder that the spring accolade began to be regarded with suspicion.

Neither was it just football. Hurling had its own bleak sequence in the 1990s when for five years running, 1993-97, the manager who had led his county to the league title ended up being replaced by the end of the year.

All of that has changed in the past decade. The impact of the calendar-year schedules and the qualifier systems in football and hurling have meant the dynamic of a championship season is now less governed by the need to negotiate a small number of titanic collisions.

The task of managers nowadays is to get their team to the sudden-death stage of the summer with their best form intact. On one level this allows a certain lack of urgency, with August the real starting point, but, on another, teams need data before they can pace themselves through the summer.

The calendar-year league provides the speeded-up rhythms of a season in microcosm, whereas the qualifiers have removed the paralysing fear of getting caught on the hop early in the championship.

This isn’t just vague theorising: the statistics of the modern era strongly support the view that the leagues have become more useful and desirable for counties in serious pursuit of All-Irelands.

Compare the post-qualifier (both football and hurling have been implementing the system since 2002) period with the 30 previous years.

In the last eight years, the league and championship hurling double has been achieved four times by Kilkenny – the same incidence rate as in the entirety of the previous 30 years (1972-2001). Football since 2002 has seen the double accomplished also on four occasions, three by Kerry and once by Tyrone. In the previous 30 years it happened just five times.

So there has been an unarguable increase in the rate of correlation between success in spring and championship. A desire for momentum is part of the explanation. Of these double winners, only Kerry on two occasions have won the All-Ireland through the qualifiers after winning the league (2006 and ’09). The other six instances have seen the winners proceed unbeaten through the championship.

There have been the odd exceptions: Donegal and Derry in football (2007 and ’08) and Galway hurlers in 2004 went on to have miserable championships when the league might have been seen as a breakthrough, although Galway did reach the following year’s All-Ireland final.

In the light of all this, where do the current competitions leave the contenders?

In the NFL it was felt Kerry, considering all of the retirements and departures, would probably concentrate on plugging those gaps during the spring, so the failure to qualify for the final isn’t hugely surprising even if dicing with relegation wasn’t widely foreseen.

Tyrone, on the other hand, who also are one defeat from demotion, were expected to give the NFL a real rattle. It’s true injuries have played a role in weakening the team, but it had been anticipated Mickey Harte might be able to use the opportunity to look at some of the fresh-faced talent in the county and still make some progress in the league.

Harte’s genius has been most evident in restructuring a championship challenge in the light of difficulties, something that is made for the qualifier system. But until this year the league campaigns have always been at least safe, even if in 2008 they weren’t mapped in the NFL before going on to win an All-Ireland along the outside track.

Furthermore, an admittedly forgettable campaign has managed to include late-goal victories over the best teams in last year’s championship, Cork and Kerry – testimony to the ability to claw out results when sufficiently motivated.

Although Cork are second behind Mayo in the Division One table, Conor Counihan’s team can further consolidate their claims to be next in line for All-Ireland success by taking the title next month.

It’s more complicated for Mayo, who reached the final three years ago, only to proceed to a calamitous championship. Still, defeating Cork would be a serious credential.

Hurling is even more interesting in that Kilkenny stand on the threshold of an unique achievement this summer. Losing three league matches, however, and reducing the chances of qualifying for the final to the wholly fanciful hasn’t been their preferred approach to championships in the past 10 years.

Brian Cody wasn’t giving much away after the latest reverse, defeat in one of those characteristic Galway shoot-outs, but neither did he appear terribly pleased.

Of course, with key players getting on in age, it would be natural to want to take things easy. Henry Shefflin – the key player – has been given a bit of time to re-charge after Ballyhale’s club success, and it is plainly critical he is fully up-and-running to inspire the attempt at an unprecedented five-in-a-row.

There have been impressive displays to date from John Dalton and Jackie Tyrrell in a reconfigured defence and from John Mulhall at wing forward, so there’s enough to be taken out of what’s happened in the campaign so far.

Nonetheless, it’s likely to be the first time in six years that Kilkenny have failed to reach the knock-out stages of the league. That year also featured two championship defeats – the most recent in Leinster, to Wexford, and the most recent All-Ireland final defeat, to Cork.

The four-in-a-row years have featured league finishes of two wins, one final and one semi-final. There was an obvious risk in pushing too hard in advance of such a potentially historic summer, but in recent years Kilkenny never seemed to be pushing that hard when doing well in the spring.

It promises to be a compelling championship, and it will be interesting as it unfolds to look back and assess the impact of this year’s league.