Give or take a day, it was July 23, 2014 when Jim McGuinness put the finishing touches to his successful plan to beat Dublin. Having managed to run the gauntlet of Ulster, he couldn’t have afforded to scheme any earlier.

It’s not how the hell Tipperary have got here so much as why not. Here are 10 reasons behind their march to an All-Ireland semi-final...

If you thought your eyes and ears deceived you last week, you wouldn’t be alone. Aogán Ó Fearghail and Páraic Duffy endorsing more championship matches? 

They’re an obstinate bunch, Tipperary football folk. Small in number but big in pretty much everything else — it took three pleas from the PA announcer in Croke Park to convince them to leave the stadium long after the players had retired to their dressing room.

At the end of last month, GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail was asked if he was worried about the standard of games in the football championship this summer.

My, aren’t we a pious lot? Brian Gavin hadn’t brought proceedings to an end on Sunday when the “hurling correct brigade” were populating social media announcing Waterford’s defeat as a victory for the game.

In the gathering gloom last Saturday night, small groups of Donegal and Monaghan players congregated in the car park outside Kingspan Breffni Park to shoot the breeze. If Cavan town wasn’t such a traffic logjam, they may have gone separate ways earlier. Yet they seemed pleased to have the chance to chat.

God love Jarlath Burns for trying but in the wake of Louth manager Colin Kelly’s impassioned criticism of the six-day turnaround his team suffered on Saturday Burns’ attempt to justify it was never going to work.