AS THE old debate about the merits of All-Ireland champions subsides and the winners slowly become irreproachable entries on the roll of honour, the new season looms into view. Amidst the fashionable deliberations on the future of football and the counter-claims that all is in fact well, one dispiriting fact can't be disputed.

There hasn't been a very good All-Ireland final - one where quality of play combined with genuine competitiveness since 1991 and it's all of three years since the Derry-Down match at Celtic Park gave the Championship a match with prospects of appealing to posterity - good football from two contenders under pressure.

The overall effect was obscured by the number of new arrivals on the scene. Historic wins for Clare and Leitrim, first All-Irelands for Donegal and Derry created their own momentum.

It's still an amateur game so applying objective standards is perhaps unfair. Counties go out to win the All-Ireland - or whatever they can every year and don't owe a duty to anyone to make it pretty or edifying. Therefore when it does happen - neither demanded nor expected the effect is all the more gratifying. What is seldom is wonderful.

One exciting feature of this year's Championship is the number of big matches early in the programme. Connacht, Ulster and Leinster have paired off their most successful counties of the 1990s in eagerly awaited first or preliminary rounds.

Some of the gloss has been scoured off these matches Galway-Mayo, Tyrone-Down and Dublin-Meath by the dip in prospects for one if not both the teams in each of the fixtures. Everyone but Meath has had a miserable enough League, but the matches will still drum up enormous interest.

If the recent quality of football is a capricious criterion for judging an imminent Championship (and the TnaG series has taught the nostalgic some hard lessons), the spread of likely winners at least hints at a good season to come.

Even in this respect, the number of plausible contenders has fallen. Prom a high, four years ago, when five counties (Dublin, Down, Donegal, Derry and Cork) were in realistic touching-distance of the Sam Maguire (only Cork failed to win it since), the number has fallen to about two.

This is different from saying that only two counties can win the All Ireland. Anyone could have said that Down would win the All-Ireland at the start of the 1991 season and they would have been ultimately, right (although probably strait-jacketed at their moment of triumph).

The argument would, however have been an empty assertion. Down evolved into worthy champions that summer. The same holds for last year. There were no generally accepted arguments that Meath would or even could win the All-Ireland, but it happened in the course of one summer.

Maybe Down will win this year's Championship, but to predict that outcome is not a reasonable argument on available evidence. The same goes for every county with the exception of Meath, Kerry and perhaps Cork. Even Tyrone, a reasonable option 12 months ago, have had a rough year.

The lack of plausible All-Ireland candidates isn't very encouraging but it's all to be played for. This cliche needs to be driven home every year because the Championship season is not some tournament run off over a weekend when the team in form can expect to win. Nor is it like a professional league from which the best team will emerge over an exhaustive programme of matches.

Championship football combines the two. It is organic in that teams will grow and wither over the course of four months, but it is random in that if the best team in May hits an injury crisis in June, they won't be around to prove their status by September.

So it is all to play for. Not alone for the counties that line up at the starting line with even the vaguest notions of success, but for the public who out of the blue can find themselves in the middle of a glorious epic or witnesses to history.

Maybe there's another Dublin and Meath or a Leitrim or Donegal out there. We're waiting.