Cork, meanwhile, will be disappointed when the chance was there but did they run out of gas?

Scheduling the Munster final for Thurles, and not Cork, has handed an advantage to the Leinster teams

When you’re backed into a corner, there’s only one way out

Dublin got the match-up with TJ Reid wrong last week and I don’t see them making that mistake Saturday afternoon

It’s going to take some outfit to beat Limerick this year

The team which lost by the least amount — Cork — will still have attracted the most criticism

Tipp are heading into this campaign with a chip on their shoulders. They've had a full 14 months of listening to the theory that Kilkenny did Tipp the biggest favour in their history by taking Limerick out of the equation last year

Some of these guys may take their emotional energy from the crowd so you’d wonder now will that have an effect on the big guns here like Patrick Horgan and Austin Gleeson?

I don’t want to be hammering lads but if you took Tony Kelly out of the team yesterday, Clare would have been whipped

The counter-argument is how much more difficult will it be to suppress emotion — all around the county — after a Munster final or All-Ireland win? I don’t see that being a problem.