Why would you show your hand now and give anyone a dry run?

Given that this league has, at times, been a huge phoney war, God only knows how teams are going to treat the quarter-finals, writes Anthony Daly.

I’m certainly not anti-football. I live in west Clare, which is the Clare footballing heartland. I played big ball with Clarecastle for years. I watch all the big football games on TV but when I travelled to the Cork-Limerick league quarter-final in Páirc Uí Rinn last April, the Cork-Down league football curtain-raiser was nearly more of an endurance test than the old days with Clare running up the hill in Shannon with Mike McNamara lashing us with the whip of his tongue.

The match was cat. Even though it went to the wire, most of the locals seemed remotely disinterested. I could almost feel the lactic acid building up in my jaw from all the yawning. Near the end, everyone seemed to be just hanging for the hurling to take us out of misery.