All the ingredients are there for another Leinster cracker

FAIR play to both Offaly and Galway for producing the game of the championships in Croke Park last weekend.

It has been a less than memorable start to the 2010 campaign in both Leinster and Munster, and hopefully those two counties have started a new trend.

The challenge now though is can they repeat it? I think they can, and the fact that the replay is on in Portlaoise makes it even more likely. There were 25,260 in Croke Park on Sunday and you’d hardly have noticed them. But put the same number into any provincial venue and you have an atmosphere — that’s what I expect this evening, plenty of vocal fans backing their own.