Honest to God.

When you look at Brian Dooher, and when you look at mostly every individual in the Tyrone defence, with the exception of Ryan McMenamin, and when you hear that Ger Cavlan might be the man chosen to lead the All Ireland champions from the number 11 shirt this summer (now that Brian McGuigan is gone for the year), you can't help slipping back into believing a) Gaelic football is troubled, b) Mickey Harte must spend a huge portion of his time manoeuvring, over and back, a valuable timepiece in front of the faces of these lads or c) that the spirit of Cormac McAnallen has grown ever stronger.

I am not being disrespectful or in any way flippant with my a, b, and c. There's no way I'd even think of being disrespectful to the McAnallen family, so proud and so courageous, in particular. Same goes for the Tyrone manager. I think the man is pretty much the complete genius.

But, let's go through my a, b, c. And let's start with c.

Cormac McAnallen was a great young man. I heard enough about him when he was alive, and since he passed away, to realise that he was someone special. But, like Brian Dooher, and like many of his friends and colleagues in the Tyrone defence, neither was Cormac McAnallen one of the most naturally talented footballers in the country.

However, he was brave, and always so alive on the field, strong and inspirational in what he did and how he tried to go about doing it. He was a man of great presence. And power, and people all around him believed in him. And they still do. It may bring you and I deeper into the spiritual world than we would like first thing this Sunday morning, but I would not discount the possibility that Cormac McAnallen is still guiding his team. It's quite likely that he was there all through last summer. Certainly, the Tyrone players and management brought him into their interviews and private conversations with such regularity that Cormac would have been in no doubt that he was still being called upon.

And then there's b. In the middle of the winter, with players all around me in the Carlow dressing room either standing upright with the help of crutches or horizontal on Damien Sheehan and Noel Molloy's physio beds, I thought to myself, sod it, it's time to give Derren Brown a shout . . . and give him a cheque for 20 or 30 thousand euro. Why not? I'd watched him on Channel Four making accountants and all sorts of people in goody-twoshoes careers believe they were bank robbers. I had the money in the Carlow senior team fund thanks to my generous business friends . . . forget about spending it on Jaffa Cakes and Club Energise, Liam.

And to hell with the training camp . . . get the best hypnotist there is on the TV over to Dr Cullen Park for a couple of nights.

'Hypnosis', according to my mini Collins dictionary, is an 'artificially induced state of relaxation in which the mind is more than usually receptive to suggestion'.

All of the teams are up to this sort of business in the privacy in their own dressing rooms. They've been up to it for years. There's nobody banging heads off the walls anymore. Everyone's sitting down, breathing deeply, eyes closed, and winning games before they have even left the dressing-room. Everyone's having a go, but Mickey Harte must be the best there is in the 'head business'.

He's not winning games just because he plays his team against 20 or 25 opponents in practice matches (at last count, I actually heard a man say that Mickey Harte had 30 opponents on the field against Tyrone before they met Kerry in the 2005 final). Maybe it's true. Maybe Mickey will have 35 players in opposition jerseys in the summer of 2006?

Maybe it's true. Or maybe, Mickey Harte is the greatest hypnotist Gaelic football has ever seen.

Finally, a. It is true, in my opinion, that there are not that many outstanding teams in the country right now. There are lots of very good football teams, however. Counties who are strong, and superbly prepared, like, for instance, Kildare.

Take Kildare. Look down on them from the stand, and you'd think that Kildare do not have enough genuinely talented players. They look strong in defence, but they don't look the part up front. Neither do they genuinely believe they are going to win anything big. Not at all. But look at the likes of Kildare from the sideline, play against the team which John Crofton is now handling, get up close to them as an opposing player or manager, and Kildare are big, and brilliantly managed, and bloody impressive. They'd skin you alive if you're not careful.

There are lot of 'Kildares' in Gaelic football right now. There are about 20 of them. More than ever, and the game is harder to win, and far more competitive than it has ever been. It's just that there have been very few genuinely great Gaelic football teams over the last decade.

Teams that will, and thoroughly deserve, to go down in history as the real thing.

Galway and Kerry have both won a fistful of All Irelands between them over the last 10 years, but neither took a grip on the game for four or five of those 10 years and put the fear of God into every other team they played. Meath, the same. Two All Irelands, but a team which will never be ranked as memorable.

Armagh were different. Only one All Ireland has come Joe Kernan's way so far, and with his team now slowly tiring mentally, and physically reaching meltdown, there will hardly be a second over the next few years, but Armagh did manage to strike fear, and great doubt, into others. Where Armagh failed, was in finishing the job. They've got two forwards with genuine, God-given, match-winning ability . . . McConville and McDonald . . .

but only one man who can handle that ability and summon it up on a daily basis.

McConville, unfortunately, has never had that same handle on his own fantastic talents.

Tyrone had Canavan. They had McGuigan. They still have O'Neill and Mulligan, and that gives them, ever so slightly, the smallest advantage as we look out over the championship which lies ahead. Starts today, but . . . who the hell's in charge of this crazy fixtures list? . . .

Leitrim have to wait around on the training fields, hands in pockets, until June 25 (when the Ulster and Munster finalists will already be known) before being allowed to join in the action. It's mad.

The league just completed was no good to anyone really. It was more forgettable than any league campaign in living memory, and thoroughly deserved to be put to death late on a Sunday evening with nobody in the country watching, and hardly anyone in Galway and Kerry bothering to turn up.

Everyone's talking about Kerry and Tyrone, same as last year. But this summer might be very different. We need it to be. If we rely on these two teams, once again, to parcel up the All Ireland championship then we're taking a big risk.

Tyrone keep taking big hits with each passing year, and they keep coming back.

They'll be there again in 2006. Tyrone will be close in September, but Kerry took a big knock last season, and while Jack O'Connor has been busy uncovering new talent . . . and Kieran Donaghy and Bryan Sheehan look like they could be on the team for a long and rewarding stay . . .

there is no doubt that he has a team deep in transition.

Kerry have one foot in the past and one foot in the future. What's in Seamus Moynihan's head, and Darragh O Se's?

How does he see his career ending? And Eoin Brosnan? When will he become 'The Man' on which Kerry revolve? And those new lads? How good can Jack expect them to be in their first summer?

Kerry, indeed, are going to have to take a significant step back and answer questions for themselves before they fire big questions at other teams. So, who's going to step forward to meet Tyrone?

This could be a summer which rewards freshness. And two of the youngest and freshest, and most talented teams in the country are Galway and Dublin. Cork might be a third, because Billy Morgan's team looks to be complete, and ready for the bigger tests.

The game needs one of them. Of the three, I think Dublin are prepared. If they win a second Leinster title, then surely every last man in the dressing room will believe Paul Caffrey when he tells them that it's their time, and their turn. A second Leinster will transform Dublin. Make them the team they want to be, leave them hungry for more and more formidable than they have been in a decade, and ready to win the All Ireland.