Bravo Connacht but don’t forget where priorities lie

Sports stadiums can be drab places long after the final whistle has blown, when all that humanity has trickled away into the surrounding streets and countryside and left behind are the memories, the cold and the detritus of a day well spent.

Linger long enough after a game, as those of us who inhabit the press box tend to do on a weekly basis, and the odds are you will eventually emerge from that privileged cocoon into a dreary nothingness. Lights have invariably been extinguished, most doors locked and the only living souls are the odd cleaner or caterer flitting about the darkness like a half-imagined spectre.

It’s no big deal unless, as has been the case from time to time, the gates have been bolted too, and exit is all but impossible. In this column’s experience, that has always been more of a risk at GAA grounds and there have been more than a few times when escape has come only after climbing up and over walls that Sergey Bubka would approach with no little respect.