Such is the way of these things now Munster finals wins, even four of them in a row, are viewed through the prism and in the context of August and September.

Conflicting arguments on the retention of the traditional Championship format emerged from Killarney and Thurles on Sunday. 

Manchester United has appointed a wounded animal with a ferocious appetite to prove some people wrong, writes Tony Leen

Afterwards there were tales of rape and pillage, of drug tests in dungeons. But the 11-point winning margin for Dublin in yesterday’s League Division 1 final is as good a metric as any by which to fire the engines of the summer scrimmage.

It drives spin-off business in Kinsale to the tune of around €10m every year. Little wonder the reopening yesterday of the acclaimed Old Head golf links for 2016 has the town smiling. It isn’t just a boon for golfers, writes Tony Leen

Peadar Healy is an under-the-radar sort, so announcing themselves with 1-18 against the second-ranked team in the country is probably leaping a little too energetically into February for the new manager of the Cork footballers.

Dressing Rooms No 1 and No 2 are only feet apart at Mallow GAA’s stately Carrigoon complex, but the swing of a left foot yesterday daubed one in black and green despair, and turned the other into forever folk heroes in Tipperary.

Kerry bid for their second back-to-back All-Ireland in less than a decade tomorrow at Croke Park, but you’d have got long odds on that in 2012 after they’d lost a quarter-final to Donegal. No-one was putting their hand up to replace Jack O’Connor, something Kerry GAA chairman Patrick O’Sullivan recognised better than most. So what’s changed? And how much longer can the Kingdom stay top of the tree