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?

Last year, when I met Bill O’Herlihy for the first and only time just days before his last broadcast anchoring the RTÉ football panel, he made one of those characteristic self-depreciating comments as we were finishing up.