A REQUEST to Mayo supporters. No more “Mayo 4 Sam”. No more public displays of affection. We get that your longing for an All-Ireland is stronger than most if not everyone else. 

There is another year remaining on the majority of the GAA’s media rights packages but the countdown to the next set of agreements, shaping up to be the most lucrative yet, has already begun.

Field of Dreams was on TV last week. Too difficult to believe, too impossible to love, it had us thinking not about Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Casement Park or a new Leinster venue close to the M50 – “build it and they will come” – but just how precious hurling is to a lot of us as baseball is to people here in America.

Rejection in any form is a wretch. The GPA are no strangers to it having been outside the GAA tent for so long. But denial is a relatively new experience now that they are inside it.

In Australia today, the AFL stage their annual national draft. It is the major plank of their equalisation strategy to make the Premiership as fair as possible.