‘You’d be horrified to see a team drinking after a league match now’

Just three weeks after winning the All-Ireland in 2000, Kerry were back out for the first round of the league, at home to a Louth team in top-flight football for the first time in 29 years

DIFFERENT TIMES: Louth players form a guard of honour for the entrance onto the field of All-Ireland champions Kerry, led by captain on the day John Crowley, prior to the Church &
General National Football League Division 1A match at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney in October 2000. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

The bobble-hatted, compression-trousered, protein-guzzling, crispy-faded player of today would struggle to believe the half-stag-do-nobody-cares-anyway attitude that accompanied almost half of the National Football League.

Before the switch to a calendar year with games being ran off from the start of February to the middle of April, the league was a sprawling jamboree with the first game played in mid-October, with two more to follow if and when pitches and commitments allowed prior to Christmas.