Big three, big four, two groups of 16, three tiers, and the Super 8. The GAA is all about the numbers at the minute, writes Oisín McConville.

The leaves are disappearing off the trees, the lawn mower is in hibernation until next year and I have transferred my golf wet gear for my football bag for a winter with club and college. And yet we have no All-Ireland champions.

Seamie McGeown, the Crossmaglen trainer, and myself run five or six days a week in Markethill. Seamie would be regularly on the phone with Tony McEntee, whom he worked alongside when the club won the All-Irelands in 2011 and ‘12. Tony and myself? We’d always talk when we see each other but I wouldn’t be bothering him on the blower and he wouldn’t be bothering me.

Role reversal is the phrase that came into my head watching Saturday’s first All-Ireland quarter-final.

Croke Park was an eerie place on Saturday. I can’t recall too many occasions when it has felt that unusual and it beats me how the GAA came to the conclusion there were 28,000 people there.