Kieran Shannon: Heroes without medals who bring the Project on are All-Ireland winners too

No All-Ireland is won in isolation. An All-Ireland is like a relay race, only more of a marathon than a lap around the track. You may not run the last leg to get over the line. The baton may even have been snatched off you rather than something you passed on. But you ran your leg

Waterford would not have made it to the last game of this season if they couldn’t draw on the reservoir of confidence that came from contesting the final game of the 2017 season, a campaign in which Noel Connors won the third of his All-Stars. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie

They won’t be in the same seat as Tony Óg Regan was, given that no one except possibly family members will be able to watch this year’s All-Ireland finals from the stands, but there’s a prospect that a few recently-retired Waterford and Mayo players will feel as if they’re in the same shoes.

In a passage from Damian Lawlor’s fascinating When The World Stops Watching: Life After the Game that also ran in these pages last week, the former Galway hurler recounted the anguish he experienced being in the lower Hogan Stand at half-time of the 2015 All- Ireland when his old comrades were well on top of Kilkenny and seemed likely to finish the county’s long wait without Liam MacCarthy.