Division 1 is about surviving - it's not for winning

The radicals had hoped that we'd seen the last of these January starts and that the Allianz League would henceforth be moved to a time of year more befitting its recently acquired stature as the greatest competition in the GAA.

It wasn't to be. The tenacious old dogs on the provincial councils weren't about to be led up the garden path to pre-season irrelevance and, aided by their new-found allies, namely the counties worried about finishing sixth in Division 1, they succeeded in mustering enough support to block a format change.

There is still some resentment in the air over this, it seems. The rather pointed comments of new Longford manager Billy O'Loughlin have gone everywhere at this stage.

"Our championship is starting in two weeks' time in Limerick," he said after their O'Byrne Cup loss to Dublin. "We've seven championship matches in Division 3 and after that, we don't really mind what happens."

We've been hearing variations on the sentiment for some time, though rarely has it been so baldly stated. A manager announcing at the beginning of the league that he doesn't care about what happens in the championship feels like a new departure for the association. The upset at seeing the Proposal B dream buried may have encouraged the progressives to dial up the volume on the rhetoric.

These are the counties most enthused about the league, the ones for whom the championship is a grim Hobbesian business - nasty, brutish and (very) short. The league, by contrast, provides regular, competitive, winnable games and achievable targets. The championship these days is only for the elite.

What about that elite? Where stand the runners and riders in Division 1?

One could argue that in an era where the league is taken deadly seriously by