Devil-may-care day a throwback to a bygone era

Tradition packed its nasty wallop into Croke Park yesterday, to paraphrase the great AJ Leibling.

After a couple of years of strategising that would do justice to the military theorists of St. Cyr, Cork and Dublin reverted to the orthodox alignment in Jones’s Road and went toe to toe, with Cork coming out ahead.

All of that is not to say that tactical innovation is dead. Far from it: Dublin boss Anthony Daly tried to free a man to protect his full-back line in the final quarter, though trying that with 14 players was pretty difficult.