Gaelic Football Any year that can claim first-time All-Ireland winners should be memorable but 2003 was a mixed 12 months for football. But no one can argue with the merits of Tyrone's championship.

From the beginning of the year new team manager Mickey Harte set about his business with the twin aims of building a team for the summer and approaching every match competitively.

This was achieved despite a litany of injuries in the spring and the distraction of Errigal Ciaran's All-Ireland club campaign - also managed by Harte - and with such success a second National League title in a row was secured. Tyrone consistently played better football than their rivals throughout 2003 but their year will be defined by the closing stages of the All-Ireland series.

That they won the county's first title will be the primary statistic as far as followers are concerned but for neutrals there is a sense of frustration that the team pulled back from their potential in the semi-final and final. Maybe the loss of Peter Canavan inhibited the players from firing on all cylinders but the coruscating play that annihilated Kerry in the opening 20 minutes of the semi-final was scaled back to something far less ambitious.

In the aftermath Harte was defensive: "I wonder how it would have been projected," he said, "if ourselves and Kerry had served up the greatest spectacle of high scoring football and we lost. Then it would have been said that Tyrone are a great footballing team but they can't win. There's no use in us playing flamboyantly and losing."

The anomaly is that Tyrone had been playing flamboyantly and winning by a distance - something they had become accustomed to doing during the season.

Disappointment was exacerbated by the high hopes surrounding the Tyrone-Kerry match. Ironically it was the second semi-final that had excited most foreboding but in the event Donegal and Armagh served up an entertaining enough afternoon.

The hope is that having broken their duck, Tyrone will let it flow next year but successful blueprints are difficult to discard.

Dour and low-scoring the final might have been but it was also absorbing and tactical with the result on the edge until the end. That Armagh should have come so close to retaining the All-Ireland rattled - without disproving - the theory that back-to-back titles are now a thing of the past.

League and championship doubles were also thought to be obsolete but Tyrone's appetite meant the league title was gobbled up without a thought. Among those whose bones were picked clean were Fermanagh, led by manager Dominic Corrigan to a roller-coaster year that included a first league semi-final in nearly 70 years, disappointing defeat by Down in the Ulster semi-final, a couple of notable scalps in Meath and Mayo and the county's first last-eight All-Ireland finish, albeit brought to an abrupt halt by Tyrone.

Managers were centre stage all through the football season - and beyond. At the top end Harte's radical approach involved a comparatively leisurely two sessions a week training and no challenge matches. All of Tyrone's 21 matches were competitive, from the McKenna Cup in January to the All-Ireland final. This is, however, unlikely to deter the modern fascination with insane training schedules - as Páidí Ó Sé's decision to call a session on Christmas Day indicates.

Along the way there were signs of life from some familiar names. In his first year across the border from Kildare Mick O'Dwyer worked his alchemy on Laois's talent bank to conjure up a first Leinster title in 57 years. A reluctant Brian McEniff effectively abandoned his administrative ambitions to switch from Donegal county chairman to team manager for the first time in nine years. Each of his previous stints had started with an Ulster title.

That wasn't to happen this time but the achievement of manoeuvring the county into the semi-finals and within shouting distance of an All-Ireland final was arguably as great a feat. Also coming back was former Dublin manager Tom Carr with Roscommon, demoralised after a dismal 2002, whom he guided to the quarter-finals through an epic qualifier route.

The year ended with another well-seasoned campaigner back on the circuit. Billy Morgan was reappointed to take charge of Cork's ailing fortunes. The county's most successful football manager with two All-Ireland titles, Morgan had been keeping his hand in by taking the tiller at Nemo Rangers who earned redemption for two consecutive All-Ireland club defeats by touching off a disastrously profligate Crossmolina in the final.

There were less happy episodes in GAA management during the year. In the highest-profile examples of the sort of excessive pressures afflicting managers, Larry Tompkins, Morgan's predecessor, and Páidí Ó Sé were accosted by agitated supporters as their respective teams were exiting the championship.

Both took quite a while to make their own exits but finally departed - Ó Sé unhappy with his treatment at the hands of the county board. Sometimes as his tenure wound to an unconvincing end the scale of Ó Sé's achievements with Kerry was forgotten but it was a pity he couldn't have done his county the final service of leaving on a happier note.

Two first-time All-Ireland winners in successive years is an accurate reflection of football's competitiveness and down the line there were a few cracks in the glass ceiling. Laois came in from the cold, Fermanagh, as mentioned, had a fine year overshadowed by the vivid trimmings from Tyrone and Limerick had a memorable summer, destroying Cork for the big scalp their continuing progress needed. And after a golden evening in Walsh Park Waterford's under-21s marched out of Munster with the county's first provincial title at the grade, having stung Kerry with a late goal.