Life as an inter-county defender, even one stationed in the relatively controlled environs of Dublin’s back line, brings with it the inevitability that you will be burned. The trick is doing all you can to limit your exposure to the fire.

The first time I managed Dublin against my own county, in 2009, we had the chance to officially relegate Clare from Division 1.

CORK 1-25 LIMERICK 0-28: The capacity of hurling to enthral knows no bounds as this wonder of a game demonstrated on Saturday evening.

Barry Kelly hasn’t retired. Not officially, anyway. The 2017 season was his last as an inter-county referee but not as a match official.

Johann van Graan has signalled his intent to make Munster a more dynamic attacking force next season with the signing of Irish-qualified Sale Sharks full-back Mike Haley.

Corofin’s Martin McNamara is delighted to have Kieran Molloy and Liam Silke available for today’s All-Ireland semi-final, but is disappointed that they have had to sacrifice a Sigerson Cup final, as a result.

Over 20 years on, Davy Fitzgerald still wants to win everything as badly as ever, writes Anthony Daly

I was driving home from an underage coaching day in Kilmacud Crokes in Dublin last Saturday when a friend texted me. “Some Walsh Cup final in Nowlan Park,” he said. “It sounds like an epic.”

Former Munster out-half Johnny Holland was forced to retire from rugby in September 2016, two days after his 25th birthday, due to a recurring hamstring injury. Now, the Cork Con backs coach is launching his wellness and performance coaching workshops.

In a TV interview afterwards, David Burke spoke about an incident midway through the second half, where he shouted to Joe Canning, Conor Cooney, and Joseph Cooney.

EACH time an inter-county manager watches his side take the field, it’s like he’s back at school sitting an exam that can only produce two possible results. Either he wins, or he was wrong.

Kieran Donaghy looked like he went to sleep in Dunboyne on Saturday night and woke up in Croke Park back in 2006, such was the terror he was inflicting on that Galway full-back line in the first half.

Waterford were just the better team. So were Tipperary on Saturday but there was still a sense that Clare left it after them. You cannot argue against 21 points from play to seven, but some of the missed chances for Clare were soul destroying, writes Anthony Daly.

It’s the hope that gets you every time. You subconsciously start to build walls after disappointments to protect yourself, and you insist you won’t let the same blind faith seep in and cloud your judgement again.

Mike Quirke gives his view of the lax protection given to some of the GAA’s top stars.

Last week, Tommy Walsh picked up his phone and scrolled down through his phonebook looking for Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s number.

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

An Australian radio station told a Sydney woman that her husband was a member of the Ashley Madison adultery site live on air.

England’s Danny Willett shot a five-under par 65 to win his third European Tour title in the Omega European Masters in Switzerland.

The last time I can recall a match like we had in Killarney on Saturday night was the ‘rain game’ in 2008 between Kerry and Galway in the big house in Dublin.

Last year, I was out of the country for the Munster final.

The day of a big championship game, a fair few of the Clare lads used to think I was on another planet, that I didn’t know what nerves were, that I was so relaxed I was nearly horizontal.

Anthony Daly wrote in these pages yesterday about how the emblems on their chests can be all that separates Clare and Limerick, but there are an increasing number of occasions when even their jerseys are spun from the same wool.

Apart from being pointless after three games, if Clare ever needed a win they were never more desperate for a result after Davy O’Halloran’s comments in a newspaper interview on Saturday morning.

A Garda Regional Support Unit member testified in a trial yesterday he was briefed in advance that an accused man was expected to be at the scene of an attempted aggravated burglary.

Anyone happening upon the Poitín Still in Rathcoole last Monday night might have gone cool on the prospects of Kerry lifting a 37th All-Ireland football title less than a week later.

There won’t be an announcement any time soon. It’s not his way.

I’M sitting at a small table in a restaurant in Castleisland with the most influential man in Kerry football over the last ten years for company.

All Ireland SFC Final

Until this week, managers, in various codes, would demand to be judged on their records, or their signings, or perhaps, in recent times, how "the group" was getting on with their philosophy.

It’s all about time. Anthony Daly knows it.

Hogan Cup Final

We must delve briefly into a murky area this week; the world of marketing.

Discipline was something Davy Fitzgerald demanded from the very outset of taking charge of Clare.

“Shocked” was the reaction of Clare boss Davy Fitzgerald, not at a rare Kilkenny scalp but to the deep reservoirs of energy and effort exhausted by his players in grinding out a one point win.

Hurler of the year Tony Kelly is relishing his marked man status heading into next year’s championship.

CLARE SHC FINA:

Like Joe Kernan smashing his All-Ireland losers’ medal off the Croke Park dressing-room wall in 2002, it will go down as one of the iconic managerial interventions.