An honest post-mortem will see Monaghan bounce back again

Probably the harshest reality of our championship structure is that for all but one county, defeat is the inevitable finale on which a season will close.

Unfair really when you think about it, as a despondent dressing room is often an unfitting scene to what otherwise may have been a productive season.

Even more depressing is that for the vast majority of inter-county players and teams, it is the only way their seasons will ever end. Last Saturday, for the third year in a row, we suffered another tough defeat at the quarter-final stage of the All Ireland series.