Seán Moran On Gaelic Games:Where did it all start? Because we know that the current supremacy of Ulster didn't just happen when, 18 months ago, Joe Kernan got out to La Manga to organise some warm weather training for Armagh.

Its roots go back nearly 20 years and Sunday's historic final is simply a reflection of the province's enduring competitiveness and the opportunities offered by the qualifier system.

Most reasonable observers in Ulster accept that there is an element of caprice about Tyrone and Armagh ending up in the final and that it represents a cyclical shift in football's centre of gravity. Just as most reasonable observers throughout the country would equally have to accept that the finalists are comfortably the best two teams in this year's championship.

It's noticeable that someone as influential in the scheme of things as Armagh trainer John McCloskey is careful to stay out of the debate on whether preparation methods in the north are objectively superior to those in other provinces.

Put simply, a team plays to its strengths. Management adopt the game-plan and tactics that suit the players available. At present, Tyrone and Armagh have better players and that is the most important factor in their success.

At least one inter-county manager from outside the province believes that the technical advances attributed to Ulster teams are exaggerated in that most of them are already practised by serious team managements.

None of this undermines the current standing of the weekend's finalists, but it relocates the debate to considering the quality of the teams rather than contemplating the discovery of some sort of alchemist's stone.

There is also a tendency for people in Ulster to be overly defensive about criticism. This has led inter alia to confusion between reservations about the quality of matches and the ability of teams. At the Tyrone media night a fortnight ago a few national reporters were asked for their views on the all-Ulster final and it was as if the journalist asking the questions was pre-disposed to negative responses.

My own replies were that it was a good thing to have the two best teams in the final, that an All-Ireland featuring two counties from the one province was an inevitable consequence of the qualifier system and it had already happened twice in hurling without the sky collapsing.

I also made the point that the success-rate of Ulster teams wasn't particularly surprising because the province had always been extraordinarily competitive and that this equipped teams from the province better than the more hierarchical championships elsewhere.

It could be added - although I didn't do so at the time - that the strike-rate of Ulster teams had been slightly exaggerated by the number of fixtures that had pitted northern counties against each other. But there's no gainsaying the depth of the Ulster championship.

Unlike other provinces, hardly any counties "know their place" in the wider scheme of things, so few enough matches are foregone conclusions. The long-running statistics on the instance of counties retaining Ulster in the past 25 years (only two, Armagh and Tyrone as it happens, have managed to do so) give a flavour of this.

In such a competitive context, all that was needed was for the province's top teams to raise themselves to the status of contenders and the consequent rise in confidence would make the province a powerful force in football.

This happened in the early 1990s, but its origins go back a few years previously. It took Down, the most successful Ulster county of modern times, to make the initial breakthrough and it is to the county's credit that the old Leinster-Munster duopoly was smashed to the extent that, in the years since, the eastern and southern provinces have actually won fewer than half the All-Irelands on offer.

Once Down broke through the dam burst and Sam Maguire went north for four successive years and, more significantly, to three different counties. But what lay behind this? Signs of Ulster's revival go back to the mid 1980s.

Better performances in the All-Ireland series, especially from Monaghan and Tyrone, were part of this, but the most important indicators were detectable in non-county activity, which involved a degree of national competition.

The club championship saw wins for Burren, from Down, in 1986 and '88, with Derry's Lavey following suit in 1991 and, of course, Crossmaglen Rangers foreshadowing the rise of Armagh a decade later.

Most importantly, the 1980s marked the emergence of Ulster institutions in the Sigerson Cup. All but three of the northern successes have occurred since 1986, with nine victories between Queen's, Jordanstown and St Mary's Belfast.

In respect of each of these cases, players involved agreed that the experience of coming up against well-known inter-county footballers from different counties and beating them had done a lot to raise their confidence. Sigerson success cut even deeper than that. Of the winning teams, all produced at least one player who would go on to win a senior All-Ireland.

The arrival of Armagh and Tyrone has been similarly signposted. As mentioned above, Crossmaglen's three All-Ireland club titles in four years would be the precursor of the county's steady advance as well as introducing the football world to the special managerial talents of Joe Kernan.

In Tyrone, Mickey Harte presided over extensive under-age success as well as taking Errigal Ciaran to an Ulster title. You couldn't say that the province has patented a new, infallible way of winning All-Irelands, but it has proved that there was nothing freakish about the early 1990s. Ulster football is here to stay.