As the league concludes, we are searching for the signs of weakness or fallibility in this Dublin side

We were stationed behind the scoring goal in Austin Stack Park for Kerry’s capitulation against Cork last weekend.

One glance at the Derry team for their game away to Mayo tomorrow probably tells us all we need to know about how the league table is going to look tomorrow evening and the likelihood of Kerry making the semi-finals has diminished greatly.

Watching a Mayo defence that badly needs shoring up take on a Dublin forward requiring the oxygen of scoring goals at home in Croke Park could be the most intriguing aspect of this evening’s clash.

The last week in February has been a strange one back our way.

The heights by great men reached and kept

Mayo have reasonable grounds for hope without resorting to arguments about entitlement. But they’re likely to come up shy in September again

Kingdom folk surely realise a lot of the arguments for a Kerry win in Croke Park tomorrow belong more to the realm of balladry than to any sober analysis of current form

I left Croke Park on the Sunday of August weekend like so many more, stunned by Mayo’s apparent lust to avenge not just last September’s beating but every other defeat and cursed day they’ve had in the great stadium. It was relentless, it was remorseless and it was a thing of beauty.

THE old chess proverb comes to mind when writing about Cork and Galway today — a player surprised is half beaten.