Who can stop Kilkenny-Tipperary renewal?

Not a spectacular Sunday, in keeping with the hurling championship to date, but an interesting one. 

We had a potential superstar seizing a game by the throat and shaping its direction; a team with its best days before it encountering a sticky situation and showing the patience and poise to play their way through it; Galway, in true Little Girl with the Little Curl nursery rhyme fashion, being very very good; and that poor red and white zombie that was lumbering around the place for the past couple of months finally being put out of its misery.

And then there were four, two of whom started out as certainties to reach the All Ireland semi-finals and the third a not unlikely candidate, with the fourth the steamer that has just about salvaged the 2015 championship as an item of conversation.