Kieran Shannon: Something's got to give to awaken hurling from midsummer lull 

This past weekend so was no outlier, just a clear and alarming illustration of how the sport has been trending.

RED ALL OVER: Offaly's Brian Duignan dejected after the game. Pic: INPHO/Tom O'Hanlon

The way hurling is set up at the moment it’s getting only one decent game in June.

This year it was the Munster final. With conditions as they were in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, it was merely the sixth best Cork-Limerick game of the past four seasons but that ranking is just a measure of the brilliance of that rivalry. As a standalone contest it was riveting, ferocious, tense, close. Everything you’d expect from such a fixture and everything the All-Ireland quarter-finals like Leinster final weren’t.