Two years at the coalface in my home county of Carlow taught me that managers are divided into two groupings - angels on my right, and total fools on my left.

Paul Caffrey is in the former gathering. He may have taken a dim view of me predicting that the vast majority of the Dublin forward line of 2006 would 'pee in their pants' before the summer had ended. I don't know. I had actually called him on the mobile earlier in the year looking for a 'challenge' game, and, after the initial 'hello', the tone of his voice definitely dropped a couple of levels when I told him who was calling.

Still, I wish him the best of luck. And boy is he going to need it over the next 12 months. At the moment, Dublin look on course for nothing more than a fairly useless Leinster title and, as everyone knows, the province is so flat that whoever is declared champions of the place still find themselves a level below Ulster and Munster. And even Connacht (God help us, but that's how bad things are, and look like remaining).

If Caffrey and his lads get to the National League final, and definitely if they win it, then, who knows, I might be talked into reconsidering that statement.

Right now, I'm looking at the Dubs deep in 'search for new talent' mode and I can't see how they hope to move forward by one inch when events get hotter and heavier at the tail end of the championship. Caffrey and his management team did everything they could do last year. Their performance was the model of professionalism.

However, Gaelic football remains an amateur game and one that is limited by great brick walls circling every single county. Therefore, the forwards Dublin possess are not going to have the time and the wherewithal to get any better (unless they all turn pro, and one or two of them uncover an additional 10 per cent of something), and within Dublin the search to find one new, gobsmacking genius with the ball in his hands goes on, and on and on, and it seems to be all in vain. Dublin need one or two 18-year-old Vinny Murphys, or one or two 25-year-old Charlie Redmonds. A Ciaran Duff, a Barney Rock.

Character. Personality. A player who stands out from the crowd in his blue jersey - what we saw from Ray Cosgrove for one summer, and what we thought we were going to see from Mark Vaughan.

Vaughan had that 'me, me, me - it's all about me' quality, and it's a shame for all of us, but particularly for Dublin fans, that we are no longer seeing very much of his unashamed star quality.

Paul Caffrey and Mickey Harte started the competitive season last night on a big note under lights, but even if the razzmatazz of a bright, shining Croker is taken away, there is definitely a real buzz, a real air of seriousness, about this National League. There is every chance it will be the most competitive and compelling league any of us can remember.

With new league tables for 2008 to be constructed at the end of the competition, the football season ahead also has the appearance of being a mad dash.

More of a good mile race, than our normal ponderous 5,000 metres. With that in mind, Paul Caffrey and Mickey Harte had better be careful they do not experiment for too long. They do not want it to be a case of too many kids spoiling the broth in 2007.

Caffrey is in 'Year Three' - the 'Big One'. Harte's in 'Year Who Can Remember', but with Tyrone's loyal following, he knows an awful lot of people are vigorously enquiring as to when exactly the third All Ireland will be won.

Mickey Harte is my personal hero, and is head and shoulders above all of the other Super Heroes out there, so leave him alone everybody. . .

The greatest thing about the year ahead is that so many of these men have so much to lose - and I'm not talking about the lads who are on the slippery slope of year three. There are so many good, decent, and even great managers who are starting out on year one, and who may live to regret, within 12 months, that they ever returned to this thankless, wretched business.

Mick O'Dwyer will have it easy. He's starting from 32nd position, and anyone with any real knowledge of Wicklow football knows he will have completed a fantastic year's work if he gets the county to even 31st or 30th position. But for Colm Coyle, John O'Mahony, Ross Carr, Liam Kearns, Pat Roe and Páidí �? Sé, the spring and summer is going to be unforgiving. Each has a large body of work before them, but not one of these gentlemen will be allowed to speak of 'three-year' or, God forbid, 'five-year' plans.

Big Joe Kernan needs the biggest year of his life as Armagh boss. So too does Peter Ford out west. So too Billy Morgan down south. So too John Maughan, Charlie Mulgrew, Mickey Ned O'Sullivan, John Crofton, Paddy Crozier, Tomas �? Flaharta, Seamus McEneaney and Paul Bealin. All of them have to achieve. They've all got to cross the gain line - as next week's visitors to Croke Park might prefer to put it.

It's going to be a great year, and we're going to have so many Super Heroes crying into their Corn Flakes during it.

The stakes have never, in my memory, been so high for so many managers, and I think by the end of 2007 Caffrey, Kernan, Ford, Crozier, Morgan and �? Se will end up in tears - and three of them might call it quits.

O'Mahony may find, on the other hand, that he is at the start of a five-year stretch in Mayo, minimum, before he ever moulds a team capable of getting back into serious All Ireland final contention. It could be longer, ten years or more, before Mayo actually are in position to have another bite at Sam.

Two men are missing, however, from the mammoth year of football ahead - starting with Sean Boylan who, however misguided, proved himself a ball of passion and fiercesome ambition in his management of Ireland against the Aussies.

And Jack, of course. The mighty Jack O'Connor, whom I also hold in the highest of high respect, and in a position agonisingly close to Mickey Harte. I gave Jack O'Connor a hard time when he was manager of Kerry but I did so only because I dearly love great Kerry football teams, and have little or no time for football teams from the county which are wined and dined as though they were great.

Jack O'Connor is a massive loss to the season that started last night. After winning two of the softest All Ireland titles in living memory with a Kerry team which was only average-to-good, it would have been tantalising to watch him go to work one more time and attempt to leave a genuine mark on GAA greatness. His successor we wish well, but Pat O'Shea can not finish Jack O'Connor's work for him. It remains unfinished.

Unfortunately.