Does every Kilkenny player really think they can take Galway down?

After all the commotion of the past seven days, today's two provincial hurling finals could hardly have come at a better time for the GAA and everyone who follows it. 

All we seem to have been talking about is health and safety and Super 8s and the growing gulf in football between the strong and the weak but today brings us all back to the essence of the games and how magical inside those four white lines they can be.

I’d be big into my football as well so I was saddened to see how lacklustre the provincial finals were. I grew up in an era where there was no more than a kick of a ball between Dublin and Meath in Leinster and Cork and Kerry in Munster and whatever pair met up above in Ulster, but last weekend you could have switched off the telly at half-time, knowing who had won.