RTÉ GAA analyst Enda McGinley believes that a number of Division 1 teams will be circling third spot in the table as the place to aim for in order to secure their ideal lead-in to the championship season.
Mayo's victory over Galway came exactly a week before their Connacht campaign began and with this year’s final set for 30/31 March, Mayo again, Galway and Monaghan could all face the prospect of a championship opener the week after a Croke Park league final.
"In Division 1, the prize is third place. We’ve seen it a few times, third place is the winning spot in Division 1 really," McGinley told the RTÉ GAA Podcast.
"You want to be out of the relegation battle if at all possible, not so much because Division 2, as Derry and Dublin have shown - previously it was considered that if you’re in Division 2 you’re not going to compete in the championship, well Derry and Dublin sort of put that to bed last year.
"The level Division 2 is at this year means I think you could mount a credible campaign, so it’s not that relegation is a major issue, it’s just relegation and the environment of that and the mentality that creates in the camp, it’s a lot of work for the management to try and turn the wheel and get things built up and build momentum.
"It puts more pressure on your provincial campaign because if you get relegated and then you struggle in your provincial campaign, that's a double negative and makes any sort of building of a campaign, you’re just going to hear all the negative voices all coming around outside it and ideally you don’t want that.
"Teams don’t want to get relegated for those sorts of reasons more maybe than the cost of being in Division 2 as it previously would have been."
Once again, the imbalance of the provincial championship adds some asterisks to the argument, according to the three-time Tyrone All-Ireland winner.
"Being in the league final and having that in the week prior or the two weeks prior to your provincial championship campaign, I don’t think that’s ideal particularly for the likes of Ulster teams when you’re coming into the Ulster championship and Connacht to a degree too.
"For Dublin, for Leinster teams and for Munster teams, a league final place probably is fine because maybe the provincial championship aren’t just at the level that those other two are."
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