Meath's affinity with Croke Park is well established with three defeats in their last 20 visits. Derry's experience isn't, however, far behind - three defeats in the last 13 visits - impressive for a county with no championship access to headquarters until the All-Ireland stages.

Much of this record has been established through their NFL exploits in the 1990s during which the county won three titles in 1992, '95 and '96 and reached a further final two years later. Yet the statistics run parallel with championship under-achievement.

The year in which Derry won the All-Ireland, 1993, was actually one in which they were eliminated from the league in the quarter-finals. One man ideally placed to pass judgement on this dichotomy between spring and summer is Enda Gormley.

Corner forward on the teams which won the three leagues and the All-Ireland, he was one of Brian Mullins' selectors when the county lost the 1998 NFL final before opting out of management and returning to the playing panel that summer.

He is reluctant to draw too many conclusions from the county's mixed decade and the interaction of league and championship.

Gormley says that, with one exception, Derry never set out with the intention of winning the league. "I remember in 1991 when Eamonn Coleman held a meeting and said that he wanted to win the coming league. Without it we wouldn't have won an All-Ireland. Back then most of us couldn't remember Derry winning a match in Croke Park.

"But I'd have to say, apart from that, we never set out with the league as a goal. So our training regimes were never affected by being in a league final. Before 1998, we worked so hard the week before that players thought we were doing too much. I know we lost to Offaly but it was much the same in 1995 and '96."

He is at a loss to explain fully why the team was never able to follow up league success in the championship but is only lukewarm about the theory that teams - even unwittingly - expend a bit too much winning the NFL.

"As opposed to that, teams know more about a team which wins and the way it plays. To an extent you set yourselves up. Maybe you lose something mentally but I don't think so because preparation for the championship isn't affected."

One factor in all of Derry's league success in the last decade was that they were all achieved under different managers. Coleman, Mickey Moran and Mullins all won the title in their first year.

It is possible that new managers feel more tempted by the prospect of going for the competition than more experienced colleagues. (Dublin, for instance, can point to the same trend in 1991 and '93 under Paddy Cullen and Pat O'Neill). Gormley doesn't agree that fatigue catches up with a team which has gone the distance in the league. "I don't know. If you look at 1992, two weeks after the league final we beat Tyrone again. We had four weeks to the Monaghan game and only drew, then one week to the replay which we won well.

"Then there was a short break before playing Down (then All-Ireland champions) which was probably our best performance.

"Then a few weeks to the Ulster final when we were terrible. If you're on a roll and playing matches on a consistent basis, you're more likely to play better."

About tomorrow Gormley feels that both teams will be relaxed about the outcome. "No team will lose a lot of sleep over losing."