This contest remains as relevant as it ever was

Old scores were never fully settled because off the field the players rarely met socially.

Those games decided how a player ranked as a hurler for the entire season and dictated what would be said of him in the pubs, factories, farms and even offices. The league hardly mattered. The championship was everything.

When Val Dorgan wrote those words a quarter of a century ago he was going back even further, referring to a specific time and a particular set of games, but he was also articulating the universal appeal of one of the great Irish sporting rivalries.