The ball has hopped up for Limerick, they must strike

While soccer, courtesy of Croatia, is no longer winging home, hurling truths are dropping towards a roost.

The most beautiful game moves to its last six pilgrims. Tomorrow afternoon, Clare and Wexford go first in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. There is a sense in which this contest lay in the stars.

I am thinking of its almost Biblical cast, intimate against intimate, Davy Fitzgerald in one corner as Wexford manager, Pat Fitzgerald as Clare County Board secretary in the other one. This All-Ireland quarter-final might be the most intense occasion since Mick O’Dwyer’s Kildare took on Páidí Ó Sé’s Kerry in 1998.