Familiar start to summer of Sam

ALL THE necessary ingredients are in place. Take your early-summer eyesore of a championship opener, season well with the usual hypocrisy about foul play, some hand-wringing by officialdom, and roast the whole thing down with the usual backlash against the media.

It’s like 2008 all over again. And 2007. And so on.

There’s a television commercial signalling the start of the championship which opens with: “Thurles 1884: how did we get here?”