Leinster SFC Quarter-final: As Dublin and Longford square off, Seán Moran looks at the long famine in Leinster football

Carnival time in Pearse Park tomorrow. Dublin enter the Bank of Ireland Leinster football championship and the Dubs are on the road for the first time in four championships. Contrary to assumption, the supporters don't mind travelling and it's the Leinster Council that takes the biggest hit, sacrificing the additional gate revenue they'd pocket by staging all of Dublin's matches in Croke Park.

Of late the blue horde have had to make do with migratory patterns based around the qualifiers, and following a team burdened by the disappointment of provincial elimination doesn't quite entail the joie de vivre of a championship outing.

Longford are pretty upbeat about this as well. Manager Luke Dempsey is putting his faith in younger players, the product of the county's recently buoyant under-21 teams. The theory goes that after a couple of trimmings by Dublin in the past two years, the new generation will have fewer issues of self-esteem.

This is a big day for Longford because it's - remarkably - the first time they've played Dublin at home in the championship and the first summer fixture in Pearse Park the county seniors have had in seven years.

On a broader front this is a significant season for Leinster football. Only once, back in the 1930s, has the province gone longer without an All-Ireland title. No Leinster county got its hands on Sam Maguire that decade, the lean spell lasting from Kildare's 1928 win until 1942, when Dublin scored what would be the province's only success until 1949.

This summer will be the seventh since Leinster housed the trophy and the decade is well on its way to proving as barren as the 1930s. Since Meath's win in 1999 Leinster has become more open and competitive - featuring historic titles for Laois and Westmeath - but it has drifted badly in national terms, to the point where the province's representatives are now back markers in the All-Ireland series.

In the post-qualifier world there are no guarantees for provincial champions and Leinster counties have struggled to get beyond the last eight since the system was introduced.

Coterminous with the decline of the province as a competitive force has been the eclipse of Dublin. This summer is the 11th since the county last reached an All-Ireland final, the same length of time as Kevin Heffernan's team bridged in 1974.

Pat O'Neill was a member of the 1970s Dublin sides and managed the last team from the county to win a senior All-Ireland, 11 years ago. He doesn't feel the current side are that far away from the top level but is at a loss to explain what has gone wrong since he stepped down after the 1995 success.

"I don't know. An awful lot of hard work is going into the game at underage levels but I think we went a bit off track immediately after '95. That could have been built on better than it was.

"But there is an element of luck in all of this. If Dublin had beaten Armagh in 2002; if they had won the drawn game against Tyrone last year - would things have turned out differently?"

Ulster is the buzz province. Since it started turning out successful Sigerson Cup teams in advance of taking a stranglehold on the All-Ireland in the early 1990s, higher education has played a central role in the development of football.

"There has been a definite upping of it in Ulster," says O'Neill. "The stage has changed there and it's as much socio-economic and political as sporting. There's tremendous access to third-level education and their institutions are well supported in both educational and sports-science areas.

"They have applied these technologies and not in anecdotal fashion. Jordanstown (UUJ) is a major force in this and the GAA has big influence there and the Ulster counties have used it well. They're very focused on what they're at and very evidence-based.

"Access has been a problem. For instance Trinity has an excellent set-up but its strength goes into the rowers and rugby teams. I lecture there and I've never seen a GAA player in the sports-science facility.

"UL (the University of Limerick) is another example. Dublin needs a UL and the GAA should buy into that. DCU (Dublin City University) is going down that road to an extent and it's needed."

For the immmediate future he's tolerably optimistic.

"It's hard to believe it's so long since Dublin was last in an All-Ireland but if the team can improve five to 10 per cent from where it left off last year, I believe they can bridge the gap to the top counties."

Laois man Liam O'Neill is chair of the Leinster Council. He has shared in his county's breakthroughs over the past 10 years - three minor All-Irelands and a first senior provincial title since the 1940s. But he also acknowledges the decline of the province's standing nationally.

"It's probably cyclical. If you go back to the 1970s and '80s Ulster were very weak and only had one team even in an All-Ireland final in either decade. Leinster is going through a bad cycle but other provinces go through them as well."

Nonetheless, Leinster isn't supposed to go through troughs this deep. For most of GAA history it has run the All-Ireland as a duopoly with Munster. Kerry continue to represent Munster with consistency at the top level. Connacht teams have been prominent and Ulster counties dominant while Leinster has become known for attractive football, cinderella stories and ultimately failure.

During the five years of the qualifier system, Leinster counties have reached the semi-finals just twice and the final once. The great breakthrough stories have come at a price. Leinster has produced champions like Laois and Westmeath with no tradition of success at senior level.

"If you look at the euphoria those wins generated," says O'Neill, "it was such a big deal that there was nothing left in the tank. Counties like Laois and Westmeath don't have the reserves to sustain that sort of success. As well as that both went mad over underage achievement and when the whole focus goes on that, the senior side suffers."

The counties with the tradition of success, Dublin, Meath and Offaly, haven't been performing. Is it a lack of underage success? In the past the big Leinster counties had success at underage but didn't appear to rely on it. Now with the onset of early talent identification and elite development squads, there is a fast track to senior squads.

Predictably Ulster leads the way. This decade the province has won four All-Ireland minor titles and three under-21s. Tyrone manager Mickey Harte has come up through the ranks with minor, under-21 and senior All-Ireland-winning teams.

That's not to say the work isn't being put in in Leinster. Dublin have begun to produce good underage sides, winning three years ago what was, astonishingly, the county's first under-21 All-Ireland.

Liam O'Neill says Dublin's progress and that of other counties is vindication of the provincial council's efforts to plough money back into football, which effectively bankrolls Leinster through big championship days: "We've invested €1,500,000-plus in games development and because Leinster is a football province, two-thirds of that has gone on football - which is fair because football receipts fund the development drive. If we relied on hurling for revenue we'd be poorer than Connacht.

"If winning All-Irelands was our only focus we'd target Offaly, Meath, Dublin and Kildare. As it is we spread the butter thinly and spend more per player in Longford and Laois than in the other counties. We have developmental responsibilities. That's our brief - to maximise the playing potential in every county. Our success is our failure, if you want to call it that."

Turning that failure into success is the next trick.

Qualified Successes

All-Ireland underage titles 2000-06

Ulster: 7 - 4 minor (Tyrone in 2001 and 2005, Derry in 2002, Down in 2002) and 3 under-21 (Tyrone in 2000 and 2001, Armagh in 2004).

Connacht: 3 - 3 under-21 (Galway in 2002 and 2005, Mayo in 2006.

Leinster: 2 - 1 minor(Laois in 2003) and 1 under-21 (Dublin in 2003)

Munster: 1 - Cork minors in 2000.

Leinster counties' best performance since introduction of qualifiers

2001: All-Ireland finalists - Meath (Leinster champions - lost to Galway)

2002: All-Ireland semi-finalists - Dublin (Leinster champions - defeated by Armagh)

2003: All-Ireland quarter-finalists - Laois (Leinster champions - defeated by Armagh)

2004: All-Ireland quarter-finalists - Westmeath (Leinster champions - defeated by Derry) and Dublin (qualifiers - defeated by Kerry)

2005: All-Ireland quarter-finalists - Dublin (Leinster champions - defeated by Tyrone) and Laois (qualifiers - defeated by Armagh).