Some empirical evidence that may go just a little way to help answer an all-too-familiar question: 'who'll win the All-Ireland?', writes Seán Moran

AND HERE it is. Shimmering on the horizon this very weekend, the All-Ireland football championship is about to embark on its 121st season. The still largely knock-out nature of the competition means it starts slowly, as there isn't the opportunity that exists in the National League to stage a blockbuster fixture in order to start things with a bang (an opportunity that is nonetheless generally ignored).

Still Longford-Westmeath aptly symbolises a familiar championship experience: a small-scale venue well filled by the supporters of two neighbouring counties neither of whom is going to win the All-Ireland.

Last year on a pleasant afternoon it provided an entertaining overture to the season and if that happens again no one will really mind the slight repetitiveness.

This is also a time of great predictions.

"Who'll win the All-Ireland?" is - as the late Raymond Smyth used to say - "the question everyone's asking".

Most years the answer everyone gets is Kerry. Going on precedent you'll generally be right once every three years.

With an unerring instinct for the line of least resistance I formulated a theory some time ago that because the championship is "organic" you can't really base predictions on what teams look like in May. Things change as the summer unfolds. So not only do I not know but it's entirely rational I don't know.

Heedless of the "organic" theory, "who'll win the All-Ireland?" remains, however, the question everyone's asking. In an attempt to dispense with the almost superstitious predictability of backing Kerry every year and to answer that question on the basis of empirical evidence let's look at the data relating to a number of possible influences.

Start with managers. Maybe they're overrated, maybe they just perform a routine set of functions and are, in the words of that great GAA profundity, "Lucky enough we won the All-Ireland". But that's not generally how players and county boards see it.

An interesting fact about All-Ireland-winning managers is if they have previously won an All-Ireland or are in their first year in charge the chances of taking home Sam Maguire are two-and-a-half times greater. This is based on information going back to the dawn of managers, or 1974, when Kevin Heffernan ushered in the modern era of the supremo. It could be argued the statistics of the past 34 years are unduly skewed by all the repeat successes of the O'Dwyer-Heffernan heyday - except the same formula holds true for every season of the past 10 years. Winning managers have either been in their first year in charge or have already won an All-Ireland.

By this reckoning this year's champions should come from among the following counties in the top two divisions of the National League: Galway, Tyrone, Mayo, Kildare, Cork and Armagh. And Kerry.

What about the raw materials for a team? How important is it to have players who have already won All-Ireland honours at underage level? Again according to precedent, the answer is "very important". In the last 20 years, only Armagh have won a senior All-Ireland without a few minor or under-21 medals jingling in the collective pocket. With some teams the influence isn't particularly strong but the connection has been there. You have to go back to Meath in 1987-1988 to find the previous exception.

After last weekend's final it's topical to point out how extraordinarily effective Kerry have been at translating under-21 success into senior All-Irelands. Last Saturday was the county's 10th title at the grade and the first for 10 years. Every single one of those teams have produced players who have graduated to senior medals.

That link in itself isn't unusual. Cork are level at the top of the age group's roll of honour and have graduated players to senior All-Irelands from eight of those teams (last year's winners obviously have years ahead of them to try to maintain the link). But the remarkable thing about Kerry is it's not just a question of a single player here and there stretching to make the connection; the county's 10 All-Ireland-winning under-21 teams have averaged seven players who went on to start in winning senior finals.

And that's not counting what last Saturday's cohort will go on to achieve.

So whereas a good few counties have underage credentials few have the cupboards full of them that Kerry possess.

Last week I dwelled - some might say at excessive length - on the implications of winning the league for counties going into the championship. Nonetheless in broader terms there is a connection. Last year was the first time since 1995 the All-Ireland champions hadn't reached the knock-out stages of the league the previous spring. This year there were no play-offs, just a final between the top two counties. Maybe therefore the theory no longer holds - or maybe it's simply good news for Derry. Or Kerry.

This will be the eighth year of the qualifiers. They've added greatly to the excitement of the championship - not to mention the impact on its organic nature - and have been a handy diagnostic for teams that have gone on to win the All-Ireland after disappointing outings in their provincial championships. This has happened three times, which is nearly a 50 per cent rate of occurrence. Interestingly it's been the preserve of managers - John O'Mahony, Mickey Harte and Jack O'Connor - who had already won an All-Ireland.

Successful rookie managers tend to prefer a scorched-earth policy, taking the provincial title and sometimes the league along the way.

Those coming through the qualifiers have each built their success on a moment of selectorial epiphany: Tomás Mannion's switch to centre back, Conor Gormley's similar move and Kieran Donaghy's transformation into a full forward. These players went on to play major roles in All-Ireland titles for Galway and Tyrone - and Kerry.

Dublin might take heart from some anniversary-based data. The county won All-Ireland titles 25, 50 and 100 years ago. Then again, in the 20 years it's been possible to do so, just two counties have completed the centenary trick of adding All-Ireland football titles in the same year of a different century.

Cork - typically - weren't content to leave it at that and did the hurling/football double in 1890 and 1990. The other county that marked the centenary of a football All-Ireland with another title did so in 2004. And they're available for this year's in the first week of May at 5 to 4.smoran@irish-times.ie