Thank you Billy and Micko for restoring my faith!

WHAT a refreshing weekend. Who would have thought it? Four games of gaelic football, one more entertaining than the next.

Thank God for Cork and Kerry. Thank God for Micko and Laois.

One of the many reasons I was so happy to see the new qualifier system in the All-Ireland hurling championship was a selfish one.

With all the extra games, spread throughout the season, I would be spared the agony of having to cover the football, specifically the football as played by most of the top Ulster sides.

I hated it, absolutely hated it.

This was nothing to do with an anti-Ulster bias, or anything of the sort.

It was an anti-cynicism bias, a bias against the win-at-all-costs attitude so pervasive in those teams, an attitude which, as I saw it, was absolutely destroying gaelic football as a spectacle.

I have a stock answer, a bit cynical in itself, I admit, whenever anyone asks me if I happened to have seen one of the big soccer games on Sky, during the hyped-up Premiership and Champions League I only watch sport.

It was an attitude I had developed over the last decade or more, as diving, spitting, feigning injury, rolling over and over like a Hollywood stuntman, as though being propelled by some unseen force after just the slightest contact, became commonplace in those games.

I got sick of it and turned away from the game.

Now, however, it's all become endemic to gaelic football, as played by the cynics. They're not confined to Ulster, let me hasten to add, but let me be just as hasty in stating that most of them are.

do. And so, I hadn't just started to turn off gaelic football, I was well into turning my back on it completely. Thus, my joy at the fortunate turn of events on the hurling championship system, the extra games.

Must say, however, that as I watched events unfold on television on Sunday, listened to the incomparable Micheal Ó Muircheartaigh on radio on Saturday, I wished I were in Croke Park. Because of Micko, Laois now play gaelic football as it was always meant to be played, the Kerry way. Is this a biased comment? Yes, given my secondary allegiance to the Kingdom, after Cork (maternal Kerry roots), but true nevertheless.

Kerry are as competitive as any county in the country, as combative, as hard, as physical, as proud a people, but they are sporting. They will play the game as it was meant to be played, without compromise, but they are fair, honest and sporting. In all things sport (and we do have a few more strings to our bow, hurling, football, rugby, soccer, camogie and ladies football in the other gender), Cork is exactly the same. Win, but not at all costs, and certainly never at the cost of the sport itself.

How many red cards did we see on Sunday? How many off-the-ball incidents, how much controversy? Not a peep.

The competing teams have won fans far and wide simply because of the way they express themselves on the football field, honestly, with joy, with competitive juices in full flow yes, but not with out-and-out cynicism, not with sheer brutality.

Many of the games involving Ulster teams in recent years, since their rise to prominence, and not least the recent Ulster final played in Croke Park, have been appalling, won no new fans for gaelic football.

This won't bother them, of course, the sport isn't their first concern; winning is.

Take this for what it's worth. Because I'm a Corkman, because I'm a big Billy Morgan fan (north, south, east or west in this island, there isn't a more competitive sportsman, but above all else he's that, a sportsman), I hope Cork turn the tables on Kerry, in the All-Ireland semi-final. In the other two games, I hope Laois and Dublin beat Armagh and Tyrone.

I'm sorry to have to say this, I really am; when the Ulster teams started to win in Croke Park, I was absolutely delighted for them, but no more.

They have brilliant footballers, have elevated certain aspects of the game, the preparation especially, the tactical battles. But they have lowered the most important standard of all, the spirit in which the game is played. Shame on them, but thank God the game is still alive and kicking (pardon the pun).

Mayo or Galway, could have resorted to the pulling and dragging game on Sunday, the ugly intimidatory tactics, on and off the ball. They didn't. Would they have fared better? Who knows.

But, the bigger question would the game? It's time to stop making excuses for the cynicism and call it for what it is.