Sideline Cut:The general attitude to the league says a lot about the contrary nature of the Irish. Back in February, the opening night of the competition attracted a massive crowd of 80,000, all in carnival mood. Now we have reached the final of the same competition, the GAA money men will be pleased if even a third of that number show up.

Try as they may, it seems virtually impossible for the GAA to manufacture anything more than a guarded respect for the "other" national competition. The importance of the championship is so weighted and richly coloured by tradition it is almost impossible for the promoters of the league to make teams, managers and supporters really "feel" about it.

Across the water, the league has always remained the enduring measure of a team's greatness. It is the accolade all the big soccer cities crave most. Cup runs, whether in the storied but downgraded FA Cup or in European competition, are welcome but the knock-out competition leaves any team suspect to a freak goal, a poor refereeing decision or other such caprices.

Winning the league - that long, slow slog through the winter, the grinding out of away points and the creating of a sense of invincibility on home turf - is what nourishes the soul of the English national game. Here, we have little time for that model of consistency. In Gaelic games, it just doesn't work. The more you review the old knock-out championship, the crazier it seems. Apart from the indomitable Kerry in football and the blessed trinity in hurling, all counties suffered from the incredibly unforgiving nature of the championship.

Teams moseyed through the winter and then went full tilt into the summer, but often their season amounted to no more than a single match. It was remarkable that counties unaccustomed to success were able to sustain interest among players and field teams almost certain to come a cropper against more powerful neighbours.

The old championship was feudal and oppressive. It was also, of course, magic. It meant a strong football county like Galway could achieve three All-Irelands in succession ending in 1966 and then not win the thing again for some 32 years.

It meant those rare years of success - the Roscommon 1943/1944 vintage for instance, or the Offaly team of 1971, or the extraordinary Down teams that cropped up in the 1960s and again in the 1990s - look all the more splendid and remarkable.

It meant that when a county made "the breakthrough", as the Donegal and Derry footballers did in the early 1990s and the Clare hurlers did in 1995, it could celebrate itself in ways that transcended the game and mattered to people in terms of family, of place and of having a distinctive local voice. That is why the great GAA captains' speeches (and there have been lamentably few) are cherished almost as much as the details of the final itself.

The qualifying system came in and offered teams something like a summer season of football, even though the innovation has begun to look dated in the past couple of years. Still, it has given perennially oppressed counties an opportunity to flourish - in football more than hurling - and has drawn the curtains on a return to the old knock-out system.

Romantics still pine for the stark drama of those old do-or-die confrontations, and it is probably true that if it were in place in the current environment, there would be plenty of "shock" exits by the stronger counties, caught by a motivated, coming young team or just a bad day at the office.

But for all its glory, it was just too extreme and financially daft.

The mystique of the championship makes it difficult to see how the league can ever fully prosper. Changing it from the old calendar system, when teams used to sleepwalk through games in October and November, has helped. By February, the public are more than ready for Gaelic games.

It could be argued the true value of the league is that it helps people get through the dark and wet evenings of February.

There is always a slightly manic atmosphere about provincial grounds during early-season league matches, a sense everyone has been hibernating and is just delighted to be outside again.

And the league has its devotees. After Dublin played Donegal in Ballyshannon this year, a number of visitors from the capital hung around on the Sunday evening, visiting the various taverns, generously talking up the chances of the northwestern county while dismissing their own.

Waiting in line for fish and chips later that night, a few of the travelling party explained that they followed Dublin to every league game, planning out their itinerary and booking into the various towns months in advance. It seemed like as good a way as any of passing the winter and it certainly brought them to towns in Ireland they wouldn't ordinarily have seen.

Of course, they weren't particularly interested in seeing the Dubs actually winning the league. The chief use of the league is to check in to see if your team is going okay, to get some handle on how they might fare in the championship.

So when it came to last week's double bill for the semi-finals in Croke Park, people stayed away in droves. The occasion felt odd, particularly the early stages of the Mayo-Galway match. This was partly because the shouts of the players rang around the ground but also because there was a nagging collective awareness that most of the other counties had gone underground, retreating to their training bases to purge themselves ahead of the championship. It is all very well doing "okay" in the league but with the prestige of qualifying for the finals comes the sensation of feeling exposed, of tinkering around in the shadow competition while other teams are preparing for the real thing.

There is a school of thinking that the ultimate way forward for the GAA is to incorporate the league format into the championship structure, ending the old provincial championships and playing the All-Ireland with pools of teams contesting the right to go forward to the knock-out stages. But surely all that would do is eliminate the opportunity for the vast majority of teams to ever win anything.

It is odd that Donegal have won an All-Ireland but never a league title. There is no doubt their run of form through the spring was primarily motivated by the immediate ambition of staying in the top flight and by the broader hope of carrying a degree of consistency and confidence into the summer. But now they are in a position to win the thing and it is not something they will scoff at.

For Mayo too it is an important match, an opportunity to close out an impressive run in a competition with a victory.

And the chances are both teams will bring a decent crowd.

It will just be a footnote when the season ends but this final should bring as much hurrah as the league could ever hope for.