Time for a new Munster champion. And soon after, a new system

Last July in Killarney, while we stood among the thousands in the Michael O’Connor Terrace looking out at both the majesty of the mountains in the distance and the depressing familiarity nearer by of two lop-sided Munster football finals, the thought occurred to us: This has been going for generations. Our grandfathers witnessed this and, if things don’t change, our grandkids could well be subjected to this.

Eamonn Fitzmaurice.

In the minor game, the Clare footballers had been trounced by a rampant David Clifford and company, 2-21 to 0-3, just as the second-previous Clare team to make a Munster minor final, way back in 1964, had been drilled by 17 points by their other provincial slavemasters, Cork.

The senior game was marginally closer, yet for ardent Rebel supporters of a certain vintage, it was still akin to a bad drug trip, triggering ’Nam-like nightmarish flashbacks to the late ’70s and early ’80s, when the Cork challenge in a Munster final in Fitzgerald Stadium had last been this feeble.