The 2024 Allianz Football League is upon us. The competition widely accepted as the sport's best structured and hardest to call, which some of its leading lights may not actually be interested in winning.
Mayo won it last year and a fat lot of good it did them when they were out in the Connacht SFC a week later and beaten by Roscommon. Looking at the April schedules of the All-Ireland contenders, it would be no surprise to see Kerry and Dublin - not exactly put to the pin of their collar in their provincial championships - reach the league decider.
It would be great to see those plucky underdogs get their time in the sun.
Gaelic football has a lot of detractors, which goes with being one of the top spectator and participatory sports in the country, but the fare on the pitch is rarely as bad as it's made out.
Novel use of goalkeepers, rampaging defenders, a new wave of generational midfielders and mesmeric forwards of the Clifford/Walsh/O'Callaghan variety mean that a good game of football can still be very, very good.
Unfortunately, regardless of the quality of the games that populate the season, the outcomes tend to be very similar.
The league has been won by eight different counties this century, but since the strictly tiered four divisions were introduced in 2008, only Derry and Cork have broken up the Dublin, Kerry, Mayo hegemony. And the gap between the elites and the rest has grown wider and wider.
My colleague Niall McCoy outlined here late last year how we are now into our 21st year waiting for a first-time winner of Sam Maguire.
Nineteen teams have won an All-Ireland, but, as Niall spells out: "Of the 14 teams that entered last year's championship season without an All-Ireland title to their name, 10 played in the Tailteann Cup, meaning such success is nothing more than a dream at present."
Since the Red Hand gate-crashed the winners' enclosure in 2003, a grand total of five counties have shared the proceeding titles: Dublin (9), Kerry (6), Tyrone (3), Donegal and Cork (one apiece).
It's not much rosier at provincial level. Dublin and Kerry maintain their vice-grip on Leinster and Munster respectively despite the gloriously rare hiccough, Roscommon (3) and Sligo (1) have broken the Mayo-Galway Connacht duopoly four times in 20 years, while Ulster is the poster boy of competitiveness with six winners in the same period.
No wonder Jim McGuinness was so typically vociferous in his defence of the provincials this week.
But his passion and enthusiasm is not replicated across the country, where several counties in recent times have struggled to find suitable candidates to fill their senior managerial vacancies, while some heavy-hitting counties like Derry (Mickey Harte), Meath (Colm O'Rourke) and Mayo (Kevin McStay) are dependant on retirees who can give the job the time it now seemingly requires.
Time is one thing, but money is what makes the world go around. And this is where the ambition of the many is crashing into reality at an ever-increasing velocity.
Despite the truncated inter-county season (or perhaps because of) team preparation costs (for football and hurling) exceeded €35m in 2023. If a conservative estimate of €20m of that relates to football then that is a vast sum of money being spent each and every year by teams with little or no hope of success at the highest level.
The Tailteann Cup is a welcome addition and realistic aim for some lower-ranking counties, but the hope of breaking into an increasingly exclusive club is fuelling an arms race.
Coincidentally, that figure is fierce close to the €32m donated to the GAA's units by JP McManus in December.
Like the upper echelons of English football, the GAA could soon find itself reliant on billionaire benefactors to keep the show on the road.
Everton have been docked 10 points and face another six for twice breaking the £105m Premier League limit on financial losses in three seasons. And only £15m of that can be the club's own money, the other £90m has to be secure funding supplied by the owner in the form of bankrolling.
The GAA has no recourse to punish counties for living beyond their means, but the disquiet in administration circles with the ever-increasing team budgets is growing louder. Provincial chairmen John Prenty (Connacht) and Derek Kent (Leinster) recently made their views quite clear, both electing to point the finger of blame for spiralling costs at the GPA.
As a player union the GPA are duty bound to look after the interests of their members, with a recent focus on mileage rates, nutrition allowances and other compensation for the level of commitment involved.
But the players, and subsequently the GPA, are reacting to the demands placed on their time by ambitious managers and county boards. We have Division 2 and 3 counties gambling on vast backroom teams, professional gym and nutrition regimes and months-long pre-seasons delivering incremental improvement in performance.
You have players from leading counties using words like 'sacrifice' and discussing 'putting their lives on hold' in the pursuit of All-Ireland glory, with more and more players from mid-ranking and lower division counties opting to take time away from the game to travel. Or simply opting out of the county scene.
It all adds up to a huge amount of time and money being invested to maintain a status quo, played out in half-full, debt-laden stadiums with 'For Sale' signs on their naming rights.
We'd love to offer a solution but our geographically-structured, amateur system makes a US/Australia-type draft system, or more European transfer market, unworkable.
You could revert to the pre-2008 league and give 'lesser' counties more exposure to the best teams, but perhaps the damage there is done. Alternatively you could place strict limits on when pre-season can start, reducing the advantages of those with the deepest pockets. Oh wait, that has been tried before...
But one thing we know for sure, the definition of insanity is taking the same approach over and over again (at great expense) and expecting someone other than Dublin or Kerry to win the All-Ireland.
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Watch Kerry v Derry in the Allianz Football League on Saturday from 5pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to updates on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
Watch highlights on Allianz League Sunday on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player from 9.30pm, follow a live blog every Sunday afternoon on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to live updates on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
