John Allen remains the last Cork hurling manager to win the All-Ireland — and the last Limerick manager to win the Munster Championship, yet his achievements and methods have tended to be underestimated.

The same day Roy Keane adorned the front page of this paper by flying back into his hometown to launch the Liam Miller tribute match also happened to be the 25th anniversary of him joining Manchester United for a then record British transfer fee.

Just months after a riveting 2001 football championship had captured the public imagination with the advent and novelty of the backdoor, Ger Loughnane proclaimed in his book, Raising The Banner: “The biggest problem with hurling is that it is in danger of being swamped by football.

If Cork’s exit from the championship was highly embarrassing, then Ronan McCarthy’s exit interview to the print media was most intriguing.

As has been their habit since the innocent summer of 2011, the Mayo football team hasn’t been short of takers lining up to bury and praise them in recent days.

Not that long ago, but before TV3 let alone Sky Sports started covering the qualifiers and before the GAA was routinely accused of selling its soul, a team that had contested the previous year’s All-Ireland final was drawn away to a Leinster team with one of the worst and smallest stadiums in the country, just like Mayo were to Kildare last Monday morning.

In his seminal book Moneyball, Michael Lewis observed that the play-offs could frustrate the hell out of some of the most progressive front offices in baseball because it offered such a small sample size.

While he was still in his early 20s, but sometime after he’d blazed onto the scene winning back-to-back Wimbledon titles, Boris Becker indicated just how worldly and weary he already was by that point. 

The only statline James’s critics were interested in was that he was now three from eight in the NBA finals, in contrast to Michael Jordan’s flawless six for six record.