In all our years following the fortunes of the Cork hurlers, it’s hard to recall another season when the team has exited the championship without such a lack of recrimination or regret

For the first time in years you’d now pick the field over Limerick themselves to win the All-Ireland. Everywhere you look there are signs of slippage

If there’s a word that sums up why the Munster round-robin championship works and why we’ve our doubts if the new Sam Maguire format will, it’s the J word

For Waterford the bad news is that when it comes to Davy Fitzgerald going up against one of his old teams or native county in championship, he usually loses to them

It makes it now official: Clare are the side who have the best record against John Kiely. They’re now the only county to beat him three times in championship

Kieran Shannon crunches the numbers to assess Clare's struggles to follow Davy and Limerick's difficulties with Clare

Markers are set early, especially with the first entanglement of those two eternal tango partners: the corner back and the corner forward

It's a measure of the phenomenon that’s LeBron James that multiple posters of his face adorn the front of Dubray’s on Galway’s Shop Street

We’re at the halfway point from when the Cork football team of 2010 got over the line and when they’ll be rolled out to wave to the crowd at the 2035 All-Ireland final

For the last time a team won the Sam Maguire having lost a championship game at some stage along the way, you have to go back 12 whole years