It’s not that it’s easy to go with the flow and go with the crowd. It’s just that it’s common, writes Kieran Shannon 

When Alan Brogan recently selected the 15 footballers he felt should be honoured at Friday’s All-Stars, he ran out of superlatives for Brian Fenton.

On Monday evening just past, probably after a few of them would have seen footage of a brawl below in Kerry on their Twitter feed on their way out the door, the 2018 Clare senior county hurling champions Ballyea returned to the Local Inn, where for the second consecutive night they were welcomed by a special constituency of people.

The same evening that both Kerry’s involvement in the 2018 championship and Eamonn Fitmaurice’s tenure as manager ended, the last two players to leave the home dressing room in the bowels of Fitzgerald Stadium were Kieran Donaghy and Darran O’Sullivan, writes Kieran Shannon.

Turlough O’Brien may have been a tad hyperbolic when he claimed the proposed rule changes to football are reflective of a 1940s mindset yearning for the days when players donned flat caps, but certainly the suggested place for such experimentation smacks of a mentality that’s anachronistic.

At first glance the subtitle might seem a tad overblown: Dublin – The Chaos Years: How the Dubs Made A Mess of Things For So Long – and How They Turned It Around.

They’d like to think they’re making changes — and for the better — but it would appear to be that the GAA’s modus operandi is just business as usual under the new leadership tandem of John Horan and Tom Ryan.

In the ever-improving as well as ever-expanding genre that is the GAA autobiography, every new entry tends to have a hook to draw the floating reader in.

To appreciate the extraordinary journey and career Kieran Donaghy underwent before announcing his inter-county retirement yesterday on the 17th anniversary of 9/11, it’s worth rewinding to where he was when those planes crashed into those towers.