"The reality is, " he added, "many counties have no chance of success." Success, apparently, can only be measured in All Irelands. Yet why is it those of you from Leitrim can't wait to get Mayo in Carrick? That those of you from Monaghan are talking of nothing only the game against Armagh next week?

That those of you from Westmeath or Offaly don't want to be anywhere else but in Croker next Sunday?

Because on that day, you know your team can win. Because you know they can make you proud.

Because, unknowingly or not, you look at success the same way the great basketball coach John Wooden did, and even All Ireland winners like Kieran McGeeney do: "Success is peace of mind knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming."

While Brennan, to his credit, is right in saying that the championship formula isn't just "quite right yet" and that it and the Tommy Murphy Cup may need some tinkering, so does his definition and criterion of success. His All Ireland stat was extremely selective; remarkably, 10 different counties in the last 16 years have won Sam.

The joy and the essence of the modern championship though is much more than about who wins Mr Maguire. A much better barometer of "success" in football is that over the past six years alone, 16 different counties have played in either an All Ireland quarter-final or semi-final.

Up to 24 counties this year can aspire to playing into August.

With the exception of New York, London, Waterford and Tipp, every other one of those counties will have tangible ways of measuring success. Even those four counties, in games against the might of Mayo and Kerry, might have victories we or Brennan will never see.

That's why we're so excited about Leinster this year. While either Dublin or Laois will definitely contest the provincial final, the other half of the draw is wide open. All six sides . . . Westmeath, Offaly, Kildare, Meath, Louth and Wexford . . . have all won Division One status either this year or last and all can win Leinster. As much fun as it will be to see the likes of McManus, Forde and Doyle battling it out in those derbies though, the biggest game of the first two months of the championship is Clones next week. That's because it will answer one of the summer's biggest questions: are Armagh back or are they gone.

Right now it's hard to tell. Beat Monaghan and Fermanagh and they're back in Croker and only one game from becoming the first team in 45 years to win three consecutive Ulsters.

That Down team won seven Ulsters in 10 years. This Armagh side could now claim six in eight. Either way, their greatness is assured, even if they've tried to convince themselves only another Sam can do that. The feeling here is that they're somewhere like they were in 2001; it'll take a reigning or future league or All Ireland champions to beat them but a league or an All Ireland champion will take them.

Then again, we can just as easily picture Joe Kernan in a dressing room in Croke Park after a big win in August or September, rightly talking about how "special these boys are".

Mention of a great manager, Billy Morgan's second coming will, in time, go down as an interregnum period.

Cork should win an All Ireland before the decade is out, just not this year.

They could win Munster though.

They're certainly due to.

C is for Connacht and C is for craic, which is what this province should be.

For the past few years it's lacked depth but this year Sligo, Roscommon or Leitrim should claim a few back door scalps. With John Morrison on board, no team will have as much fun this summer as Mayo, and with Ciaran McDonald back too, possibly no team will be as much fun to watch either.

Right now Galway, and particularly Peter Ford, seem to have something over them, but there was method in Mickey Moran's and Morrison's apparent madness in questioning Galway's robust approach in Castlebar. They both know that referees subliminally pick up on such soundings.

On paper, and for a long time on grass this spring, Galway have a lethal attack, but there was something disturbing about Padraic Joyce's and Michael Donnellan's freetaking in Limerick two weeks ago. Both had opportunities to put Kerry beyond reach but both were tentative, even casual, in their approach to those set pieces.

There was nothing casual or tentative in their freetaking, say, in the closing 15 minutes of the 2000 All Ireland semi-final against Kildare; everything they did in that time was driven by conviction, everything informed by a huge desire to win a second All Ireland.

Maybe Limerick was just an off day but the fear here is it was symptomatic of something else. While they're still stirred by the odd big challenge, like the league semi-finals against Tyrone two years ago or the game against Mayo at the same juncture this year, we wonder are they both willing to again click into Player of the Year-like mode, as opposed to the comfort zone of All Star nomination mode. If it's the former, they can win it all.

Two Leinster teams went down to Killarney within the space of a week.

There's no doubt which one impressed the Kerry intelligentsia more. Laois will flirt with us but then deceive us. Dublin are becoming more and more marriage material. There are concerns about how Barry Cahill will fare on full forwards in the Ronan Clarke mould, but as Tyrone proved, maybe the years of winning All Irelands with the same full back for 350 minutes is over; in the Clarke-like scenario, Paddy Christie might be able to offer Chris Lawn-like minutes. They also now look like that they have, just like every other All Ireland champion of the past nine years, two marquee forwards. Alan Brogan is no secret. Soon, neither will Conal Keaney. In his last 10 competitive games, he's always scored from play, in nine of them, at least twice.

The Dubs don't lack consistency either; with the exception of Monaghan, they performed well in every game this spring. The only thing is, first-time champions have to be ultraconsistent. With Connacht and Leinster all on the same side of the draw, there's an All Ireland final spot, and therefore an All Ireland itself, screaming out to the Dubs, Galway, Mayo and Laois. The feeling here is that that while the Dubs look best equipped to win Sam, that they might be the victims of a last kick in a Mayo in a quarter-final.

Which leaves us with Tyrone and Kerry. For six of the last seven years what we've said here in May has gone down in September; only a Steven McDonnell point in 2002 deprived us of seven out of seven. This year we're split. Darragh O Se and Moynihan look hell-bent on having the kind of sweet farewell Lawn and Canavan enjoyed last year. Tyrone are without that pair, and now, Brian McGuigan.

Tentatively though, we still feel it'll be Tyrone. Last week Mickey Harte described McGuigan as irreplaceable.

There is only one player in football that's irreplaceable and that's Colm Cooper. While McGuigan was the difference in last year's All Ireland final, he was peripheral in Tyrone's march to that final; sometimes his brilliance can be exaggerated. They can move Ger Cavlan to 11 and Sean Cavanagh to the wing. Or move Stephen O'Neill out there where he won his first All Star and move Kevin Hughes inside.

Jody Gormley said after Abbey CBS, Newry won last Monday's epic All Ireland final that his team's motto all year was, "Whatever it takes." The sense here is that another Tyrone manager will be saying the same in September. Someone sometime has to win Sam back to back. Somehow Tyrone will find a way.