MUNSTER SFC Quarter-Final

A COLLEAGUE of mine who has graduated in such matters has often been heard to utter the phrase “ní hionainn dul go dtí tigh an rí agus teacht as” — going to the king’s house and coming out of it is not the same thing.

WITH the start of championship only weeks away, this weekend’s Comhdháil Bhliantúil Cumann Lúthchleas Gael in Newcastle, Co Down remains a distant concern for many GAA people. There are, however, going to be certain decisions taken before close of business at 4pm today that may affect the mechanics of our games and our competitions for some time to come.

IT MAY have been missed in the debate ahead of tomorrow’s crunch National League tie in Killarney, but Jack O’Connor will be aware that the three years he delivered Sam Maguire in autumn (2004, 2006 & 2009) have also seen his teams win the league in spring.

THERE are those who would suggest that recently-retired Kerry goalkeeper Diarmuid Murphy’s greatest achievement as a footballer was finding a way of changing his kick-out technique over the course of his last season in green and gold.

PERHAPS the most striking aspect of Cork’s opening National League win in Scotstown last weekend wasn’t that the meanest defence in the country conceded 3-12 but that all 3-13 of the Cork total came from open play.

IF Bertie Ahern is entitled to an artist’s exemption on the grounds that a certain amount of creative and imaginative toil went into the production of his biography, then surely the humble hack tasked with previewing the National League deserves similar treatment.

IN A truly fascinating essay published last month on the effect of Celtic Tiger affluence, Declan Kiberd, professor of Anglo-Irish literature at UCD, said that “things are often studied only when they start to go wrong. The end of things is the moment we start to understand them: and only when they are understood do we begin to realise what might be lost”.

It may not be Friday the 13th, or Halloween, but what are the chances of Cork’s nemesis coming back to haunt them in Sunday’s All-Ireland final? asks Dara O Cinnéide

FOR Henry Ford, history was tradition and therefore “more or less bunk”.