Intensity levels off the charts for winter start

Well, the opening weekend of the league succeeded in capturing our attention.

The intensity levels in a lot of the games were off the charts for January football. More so than I've seen for many years.

The Mayo-Galway game, especially. I know it's a derby but it smacked of two teams who set their stall out early to get points on the board.

In the past, your attitude to the league was often dependent on how you finished the previous year.

Under the old system, when the All-Ireland final was in September, you'd arrive into next season with less time to prepare. If you got to the final you'd have a holiday. You'd also have the club season running deep into the winter.

So, there typically was less emphasis on the early rounds of the league. Often you'd only be slipping back in your strongest players by Round 3 or 4.

But now, we've had six months with no inter-county football. And that was very apparent. A lot of teams looked like they had their work done over the course of November and December.

There were plenty of turnovers and mistakes. It was definitely a case of early January blues in terms of skill levels but you'd expect that to be ironed out. What couldn't be faulted was the endeavour and the intensity on display.

One stat that really grabbed my attention came via Ray Boyne, who worked with Dublin in the past, which was the tackle count in Castlebar was nearly double what it was in the Dublin-Kildare game.

Both teams clocked around 90-odd tackles in MacHale Park, Mayo hitting 95 and Galway on 91.

Now, it's only a little barometer. Ground may play a factor in that. You might see the tackle count coming down as the ground gets harder and the games get quicker as we arrive into summer. So that number is probably relatively high