The league is a test of patience, focus and blind faith

It's close to six months since the 2023 All-Ireland SFC championship concluded and now serious inter-county fare looms into view again.

My own club season wasn't as memorable as its immediate predecessor - we surrendered our Mayo SFC title to old foes Breaffy in the quarter-final, abruptly ending our back-to-back hopes or any notion of mounting a better crack at a Connacht campaign.

Speaking of the provincial dimension, I noted John Fogarty's article in the Irish Examiner this week on how the Allianz Leagues now generate more gate money than the provinces and are gradually overtaking them in importance.

Then, Jim McGuinness pushed back on that particular narrative on Donegal radio, though we all know Ulster is an exception. The other three provincial tournaments were fairly tame affairs, in particular the three provincial deciders, which were all turkey shoots.

"Cillian couldn't watch the last few minutes and picked up a Bible he found in the pub and read it in the toilet."

The hype around the league has certainly grown, as seen in attendances, though from a Mayo panel perspective, we always took the league seriously in my time.

I appeared in fits and starts in the league in 2011, though my first year as a regular starter was 2012, when we lost the final to Cork.

It was early in James Horan's first reign and our sports psychologist at the time harped on about the fact that the teams reaching All-Ireland semi-finals and finals were nearly always in Division 1.

The guiding philosophy was that Division 1 football was critically important to our development as a group. There wasn't quite the laser focus on winning every game in the league as there might be in championship. You would tend to pick your battles depending on the