And now the end is near, and so we face the final curtain...

There was, as a once-popular Scandinavian quartet might have put it, something in the air that night.

Cork and Waterford. The curtain-raiser tomorrow where a few years back it would have been the feature event.

It was an hour or so after the Cork/Tipp semi-final last month and we were hanging around outside the Blackrock clubhouse when a gentleman in a blue and gold jersey was heard to utter the following words.

There is only one place to start. Croke Park, July 18, 1976.

Pete Finnerty had a neat way of summing up Galway’s failings a few years back.

So here it is at last.

In one of the very best episodes of Seinfeld, it turns out that among the members of Elaine’s aerobics class is the dashing, handsome and ostentatiously eligible John F Kennedy junior.

Liam Dunne may have played the game on the edge himself but as Wexford manager he will demand total discipline

Declan Ryan faces a big summer and needs to show he has learned from past errors if Tipp are to prosper.