St Jude’s manager Padraic Monaghan pinpointed a powerful second-quarter showing as a crucial factor in his side’s stunning success over St Vincent’s in the Dublin SFC at Parnell Park yesterday.

Before the majority of people had left Croke Park yesterday, the talk had turned to another All-Ireland final: The 2019 edition and if Dublin can land the elusive five in a row of senior titles.

An insipid Dublin SFC final was decided by the simple fact St Vincent’s weren’t as poor as their opponents.

Dublin and Mayo were the two biggest spending inter-county set ups last year, clocking up over €3m in bills between them. That’s a lot of rubs and grub, writes Tony Leen. 

Louth will arrive in Parnell Park confident if they perform to their best it will be enough to cause an upset against Meath, writes Tomás Quinn.

Tomas Quinn and Eoghan Cormican review the weekend's Allianz Football League action with Colm O'Connor.

When teams in sport go on long unbeaten runs, everyone has them in the crosshairs, writes Tomás Quinn. 

“My memory is not the best,” laughs Pearse O’Neill. He’s just been asked to jog it back to the spring of 2010 when the mark last featured in inter-county Gaelic football.

Dublin 3-13 Dubs Stars 4-9: We didn’t, in all honesty, learn much about Dublin football at Parnell Park yesterday that we don’t already know.

Tomás Quinn has lauded his St Vincent’s captain Diarmuid Connolly’s dedication to the club after his All-Ireland winning exploits with Dublin this year.

Palatine (Carlow) 0-8 St Vincent’s (Dublin) 0-16: Palatine co-manager Mick Lillis claimed Diarmuid Connolly is an easy target after the St Vincent’s captain was black-carded in the first half of this Leinster club SFC quarter-final in Carlow yesterday.

Are the back-to-back All-Ireland champions set fair for further domination or already past their peak?

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.

It’s a good time to be a sports fan in Ireland. It seems every week we have another sporting occasion to turn our attention to, from the Euros to international rugby — both senior and U20 — to the GAA championships that have picked up speed in the last few weeks with some shocks big enough to silence the debate on structures for the time being.

Three weeks ago today, Laois got their 2016 championship underway. At home in O’Moore Park against Wicklow, they stuttered to a 3-16 to 0-18 win, and afterwards midfielder John O’Loughlin was interviewed on the pitch by Newstalk’s Colm Parkinson.

Heading into Croke Park for yesterday’s league semi-finals, the majority of form watchers would be very familiar with the three heavyweights on show — Dublin, Kerry and Donegal — and more looking forward to getting a closer look at Roscommon.

Already we are faced with a challenge, a familiar one: Weighing up exactly what these early season games mean and how relevant are they?

Rarely does a day pass in this country without a wonderfully evocative image appearing in the national papers from some sporting event or other and yesterday’s shot in these pages of Patrick Cronin striking the sliotar amidst the floodlights and flurries of snow during Cork and Waterford’s pre-season meeting in Mallow certainly ticked that particularly box.

A few months before Bryan Cullen would become the first Dublin man in 16 years to lift Sam Maguire, the then director of football operations at Chelsea, Mike Forde, spoke at a conference in Liverpool about a bit of a continuing professional development tour he took in on Stateside.

Ballyboden St Enda’s 2-8 St Vincent’s 0-10 (Dublin SFC Final): Anybody who knows the impressive breadth and rich vitality of Ballyboden St Enda’s would never describe them as giant-killers.

St Vincent’s 0-22 Na Fianna 2-9 (Dublin SFC semi-final): St Vincent’s kept their ambitions of a third successive title firmly intact as they accounted for Na Fianna yesterday afternoon.

The Championship isn’t over a week and already the debate has begun about Dublin dominance next season and how the football landscape will look in the coming years.

Some years ago, Páidí Ó Sé told the GAA world that ‘a grain of rice can tip the scales’. He must have heard it from a Chinese Emperor on a visit to Ceann Trá!

We love clichés in the GAA, no matter what way a game goes.

They say to really see a game properly, you need to be in the stand taking it all in, being in a position to see players’ movement, the real shape of a team or the off the ball tussles which TV cameras often don’t pick up.

3 key battles from yesterday’s All-Ireland semi-final...

Q. Who or what has been the biggest disappointment of the football championship so far?

Thurles on a Saturday evening for knock-out championship with two teams still searching for their true identity.

Sitting in the Hogan Stand two weeks ago watching John Heslin roll in the game-clinching goal, it was hard not to get drawn in by the pure joy and excitement the Westmeath squad and supporters were experiencing.