After Cork beat Kilkenny in the All-Ireland quarter-final last month, manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy eventually made his way to the tunnel leading to the Semple Stadium dressing-rooms.

Sunday is Dr Con Murphy’s 25th All-Ireland final with Cork. Medic, psychologist, confidante, wise-cracker: the West Cork man has a best-selling memoir on his hands — if he ever decides to write it.

Cork folk in Duhallow are usually gearing up for the All-Ireland football final, but the rise of hurling in the division is no accident.

Where once Cork could field All-Ireland fifteens without leaving the city boundaries, now the Rebel hurling strongholds are flung far and wide, from Senior to Junior, says Michael Moynihan.

Consider yourself a self-respecting Rebel die-hard? Not unless you meet these criteria.

I SEE Brian O’Driscoll has been in the news again recently. In case you missed it, O’Driscoll has been speaking about his disappointment with being dropped for the third and final Lions game this summer against Australia, and he said he was a touch resentful towards coach Warren Gatland for not giving him a game in that series-decider.

Sunday is already too close to call for many observers, but Cork are seen as having one advantage over Clare, at least.

My best guess regarding the only encounter I had with Seamus Heaney is that it happened in 1987 or so.

A long time ago Jimmy Breslin wrote a baseball book entitled Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? Don’t get offended, people of Clare. I refer to those of us in the pontification game, and in particular those of us who were in Limerick last April for the relegation play-off.

I see a lot of ink, or air, or gigabytes, being expended on a new book by David Peace, Red or Dead, about Bill Shankly, who once managed Liverpool.