A Kilkenny-Tipperary All- Ireland final — wonders never cease.

In the Father Ted episode where a bomb was planted on Dougal’s milk float, two fellow priests and a tense Ted were involved in a major planning session.

“I would have felt at the start of the year that there were seven or eight teams capable of winning the All-Ireland final.

Brian Cody has never sought to overly complicate matters. Whatever about the tactical nuances he may attempt to implement or, indeed counter, the Kilkenny manager is fully aware that any game-plan must be built on the non-negotiables of spirit, honesty, character and work-rate.

There’s no value in told-you-so’s and there’s no satisfaction in them either but what happened yesterday was in the offing.

The Cats were better than the Munster and All-Ireland champions for the vast proportion of this game.

And so, 14 years becomes 15, one short of Cork’s longest spell without the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

The revamped hurling championship has given us many wondrous memories this last 13 months but the sight of Wexford and Kilkenny supporters jiving away together to the tune of 'Dancing at the Crossroads' may well be the most bizarre.

It was the first time that the Cats were beaten in the Championship on home soil since 1949.

Castlelyons’ Niall O’Leary is the new face in the named Cork team to take on Tipperary in Sunday’s Munster SHC Round 1 clash as John Meyler goes with 13 of the team that were defeated by Limerick in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final.

When Henry Shefflin talked up Limerick’s All-Ireland credentials earlier this week, he kept referencing the spine of their team.

The scoreline suggests a rip-roaring contest but that is a false reading.

You probably know the Páirc Uí Chaoimh playing surface yesterday was the subject of much negative comment, to put it mildly.

Springtime may not have landed in Nowlan Park quite yet, given the chill in the Kilkenny venue yesterday, but the virtues and habits of the men in the striped jerseys remain evergreen.

Any time I’m on the road on a Saturday evening, I always tune into Céilí House, one of RTÉ Radio’s most popular programmes of traditional Irish music and song, writes Anthony Daly.