Aidan O’Shea is right. No sooner had he completed his latest wrecking-ball display then he’d tell reporters before they’d tell him, “The reality is we’re always going to be judged on whether we get over the line.”

It was a small thing but it told us a lot.

Watching the football over the weekend, the old Depeche Mode song and lyric kept making its way into the jukebox in our head: "It’s just a Question of Time." It started in Killarney, with...

In this game, at this time of year, it’s the question that constantly, inevitably, crops up in the car home.

And there you were, thinking you’d never see him or Westmeath again, when who springs up in Croke Park and on your screen but himself. 

Before getting into how both Cork and Kerry will be better for last Sunday, let’s start by acknowledging and appreciating that Cork-Kerry itself has hardly been better than last Sunday.

Well that was good for the soul, and good for the championship.

It’s off, in ways we wouldn’t have expected under a manager of Martin O’Neill’s standing.

Well, there it went, just like that, in something of a whimper.

They couldn’t, could they? Go all the way?