Who said Kilkenny don’t do tactics?

In Nowlan Park two weeks ago, there was a sense in the air that you could nearly touch, that Kilkennyism, that fireproof security in themselves and their team, an attitude that said, ‘Ah, they’re all on about Tipperary, Galway and Waterford, it doesn’t matter who we’ve lost, we’ll take down any one of them’.

Yesterday in Nowlan Park reminded me of the Gaelic Grounds in 1993.

It’s funny how this whole thing works.

Before yesterday’s Munster hurling semi-final began, the mood and atmosphere around this Cork team reminded me of 2003, when they met Clare in Thurles.

To me, Derek McGrath has been manager of the year to date.

The Leinster Council have a lot to answer for.

When I stepped down from Dublin last September, I was barely back down the M7 when some people already thought I had relocated to Galway. 

I was in the RTÉ radio booth in the cockpit of the Kinnane Stand yesterday, when the fourth official signalled there would be just one minute of injury-time.

The day of a big championship game, a fair few of the Clare lads used to think I was on another planet, that I didn’t know what nerves were, that I was so relaxed I was nearly horizontal.