Championships are won every year. Slams aren’t.

In almost any other sport or competition, it would be anathema to a type of observer, especially Real Championship Man: The wretched dead rubber.

A team that has already won the competition against a team that already can’t; sure what’s there to really play for, what’s really at stake?

In hurling country, where it takes an occasion like next Saturday for the oval ball to be granted a one-day pass as the people’s game, there are objectors to the new-look provincial championships coming to them soon, because of the appalling vista the last round might throw up where teams are already aware of their fate.