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.

Other than how referee John O’Brien could have got it so wrong on Saturday, the most pertinent question arising from the Christy Ring Cup final surrounded the role of HawkEye in Croke Park. 

Waterford manager Derek McGrath on his fears that his obsession with hurling is affecting his job, his relationship with Davy Fitzgerald and being perceived as a pariah of the game

For a while there, the dunes of Banna Strand were threatening to become for Kerry what the hill in Crusheen was for the Clare hurlers in 1995 or the Spartan-esque Bere Island for Cork’s footballers in 2010. 

Maybe it’s because we’re so used to seeing Kilkenny front and centre after most games but it seemed they spent an inordinate amount of time behind their dressing room door on Sunday.