Enda McEvoy: This 2021 Championship is not so much sucking diesel as guzzling it

Maybe the simple fact of it not being another winter championship has helped too. Sun on our backs, short sleeves on our shirts, smiles on our faces. Maybe.

NOT FOR STOPPING: Waterford’s Patrick Curran powers past Tipperary’s Pádraic Maher in last weekend All-Ireland SHC quarter-final at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Picture: Inpho/Brian Reilly-Troy

The All-Ireland championship is rarely a triumphal procession, with the favourites bombing out of the traps and making all to win by six lengths. As with the other great Mount Rushmore of the sporting summer, the Tour de France, the landscape changes and assumes new shapes while the contestants are in motion.

There are swoops and climbs and tumbling descents and occasional spectacular crashes. The peloton can gain or lose ground. The leader is always there to be shot at.