There can’t be many upsides to losing an All-Ireland final but it was put to Kevin Moran yesterday that their loss to Galway had at least avoided the spectacle of John Mullane riding a horse through Waterford City in his birthday suit.

The variety of old tour t-shirts making their way up O’Connell St were outnumbered only by the range of accents heard as the crowd turned towards Parnell St and on to Croke Park.

At last count, Paudie Murray’s backroom team numbered 16. That’s a fair number of lieutenants to have in your corner. Then again, it’s a fair operation he’s running.

Many coaches in sports these days talk about just being ‘figureheads’ for large management groups and facilitating the players’ efforts to improve and succeed as a team.

While I always enjoyed the hurling column of Tony Considine over the years I have to say that he went way over the top in his analysis of last Sundays hurling All-Ireland between Kilkenny and Galway (Irish Examiner September 8)

Nabokov tells us there is no science without fancy, nor art without facts. Can we apply that to yesterday in Croke Park?

Former Kilkenny All-Ireland hurling captain Eddie O’Connor has castigated plans for mandatory blood-testing of GAA players, stating that if it becomes mandatory players will have to paid as professionals.

Back in the day when I believed that politics could improve the lot of the common man, I used to be enthralled by the British general election, writes Paddy Heaney.

Foolish pundits with space to fill in the aftermath of All-Ireland finals are frequently tempted to wax on about the likelihood of the new champions becoming a three-in-a-row team.

Mayo 2-13 Tyrone 1-13

Kerry captain Eoin Brosnan is looking forward to this weekend’s All-Ireland quarter-final clash with Cavan.

There was no pitch invasion in Croke Park two days ago.

Donegal 3-20 Roscommon 3-16

Kildare 0-19 Offaly 1-12

Away from the action and thus TV cameras, the struts, strolls, calls and cajoling of the inter-county manager are largely ignored.

If the late David Foster Wallace had been interested in hurling, instead of being some class of tennis fan who preferred to write about Roger Federer, he might have found his ideal subject yesterday in Croke Park.

ONE of the pleasures of writing in these pages this past year was the opportunity to get an extensive one-to-one interview with Henry Shefflin.

MAYO have become Samuel Beckett’s child of 2011: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

HE didn’t notice himself breaking into a fast, ungainly walk towards Daniel Goulding. Along the sideline with the Hogan Stand suppressing, suffocating. Simple message. Kick it dead and this will be all over. He thought the message was simple. No ambivalence. Kick the ball dead.

FOR the Cork players, and all they have been through over the past few years, this was the sweetest thing.

FINALLY, after six long months and 11 games of chopping and changing, some tentative signs that the Dublin forward line does not consist solely of Bernard Brogan and five AN Others.

A leading GAA official has declared that the use of video referees to determine whether disputed scores dissected the goalposts or went wide would not work in Gaelic games.

A FOOTBALL thought to be from the ‘Bloody Sunday’ Croke Park game between Tipperary and Dublin in 1920 is just one of the items set to make thousands of euro at Mealy’s and Adam’s auctioneers Independence Sale.

Kilkenny 5-21 Wexford 0-17

TRY as he might, Ephie Fitzgerald was simply unable to hide his frustration.

FOR ten minutes during the first-half of yesterday’s second game, the spectre of Kilkenny’s annihilation of Offaly hung over proceedings at Croke Park.