Michael O'Halloran won two All-Irelands in his five years playing for Clare, a haul he likens to winning the lottery. Last Sunday, his son Matthew won an All-Ireland minor title in Thurles. As the wheel turns, Michael sees a county now playing and working smart at all levels. 

We often hear that there is too much tinkering to the rules of football, that the game should be just left alone, but in truth there hasn’t been enough. It needs new rules

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