Late August 1997 and Ger Loughnane is talking about life, the universe and hurling in a hotel in Ennis.

Foolish pundits with space to fill in the aftermath of All-Ireland finals are frequently tempted to wax on about the likelihood of the new champions becoming a three-in-a-row team.

Just suspend disbelief for a moment and try visualising the following scenario, implausible though it may sound. Clare won this year’s All-Ireland all right, but they won it the first day.

Once more with mixed feelings, then. It shouldn’t have come to this, and not because Brian Gavin was as liberal with his interpretation of the laws of added time three weeks ago as he usually is with his interpretation of the laws of the game.

Why didn’t Clare win by five, six or seven points? It is the only place to start. It remains the obvious question since Sunday. Irritatingly, there is no obvious answer to it.

Michael Lyster, the Jarvis Cocker of RTÉ, likes nothing better than getting down with the common people, it seems.

The hows and whys of Mayo’s success in a moment – something to do with being able to sort things out as you go along, basically – but first, the headline news from Croke Park yesterday: Joe Brolly failed to detonate.

Forget the misgivings about the hype in Limerick, forget the five-week break, forget the tactical gyrations.

They’ve always had each other. When Clare produced their finest team in two decades to beat Cork and Tipperary in 1955, it was a young and unconsidered Limerick outfit, Mackey’s Greyhounds, who tripped them up in the Munster final on an afternoon of sub-Saharan heat on the Ennis Road. When Clare produced their next successful team two decades later, the bunch that won two National Leagues in the late 1970s, the big championship rivalry was with Cork but – all politics being local — the rivalry with Limerick wasn’t far behind.

AT the final whistle a great roar erupted from thousands of Leeside throats and rumbled around Semple Stadium. But only at the final whistle.