Malachy Clerkin: Dublin’s hurlers look in disarray
Worse almost than the fact that the replay against Galway was gone from their grasp inside the opening 11 minutes was the chaotic way Dublin went about surviving the remaining hour.
Liam Rushe has been playing in the forwards under sufferance all year yet they waited until they were 15 points down to bring him back and station him at six. For the second half, they threw him in at full forward. Make a firefighter go to every call-out and chances are he won't douse any of them completely.
No Dublin defender finished the game in the position he started it. They tried three different full backs and three different full forwards. Paul Ryan came on for David Treacy and played reasonably well in a hopeless cause only to be replaced late on by Conor Dooley, heretofore considered a goalkeeper.
The plan was hard to discern, to put it mildly. Dublin surely aren’t long for the 2015 Championship.
Seán Moran: Hurling’s most entertaining rivalry
Waterford’s exuberant defeat of Cork in Thurles renewed what has been arguably hurling’s most entertaining rivalry of the new century. The sequence can be said to have started at the end of the old millennium when Cork gave notice of what was to be an All-Ireland winning season in 1999 during Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s first tour of management duty.
Sunday was the 15th championship meeting of the counties since that day 16 years ago and it’s been a very balanced series. Cork have won seven, whereas Waterford’s win at the weekend was their sixth and two have been drawn.
In all, just 20 points in Cork’s favour separates the aggregate scores over the 15 matches, 20-277 to 28-233.
Waterford however have relieved Cork of their three most recent Munster titles.
Sunday was the latest in this sequence which extends back through 2007 when Cork were reigning back-to-back champions and 2004, which enjoyed contemporary acclaim as possibly 'the best Munster final ever' when Waterford, minus the red-carded John Mullane, managed to win by a point.
The fixture has been of significance for both counties. Cork have played Waterford in each of their three most recent All-Ireland winning campaigns, 1999, 2004 and ’05.
In 2004 they lost the Munster final but went on through the qualifiers to win the Liam MacCarthy; their conquerors however lost an All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny.
Finally and no pressure on Waterford but the county’s previous four wins over Cork in the Munster championship during this sequence (the fifth was an All-Ireland quarter-final) have all been followed by the provincial title.
Ian O’Riordan: Bradley displays his reliability for Derry
If some Derry footballers woke up Monday morning still feeling a little lucky to have got out of Celtic Park on Sunday then they’re not alone. About two hours after the game, this correspondent was politely informed the adjacent car park was being locked, and if he didn’t immediately remove his car it would be locked in for night.
That at least set the pulse racing, after an otherwise calmly hectic afternoon. Ulster football may have found a new lease of life this summer – Donegal against Tyrone still the benchmark – yet neither Derry or Down seemed particularly bothered by the winning or losing of this one, not as if their lives depended on it, anyway.
It was a strange game in many ways: Derry were boldly dominant either side of half-time, then suddenly retreating, going 21 minutes without a score; Down looked out of it early in the second half, especially when Conaill McGovern was red-carded (harshly, as well, as the TV footage later suggested), yet suddenly shackle-free, they ran at Derry with increasing belief. Just not enough belief to get them over the line.
The difference then could be summed up in the old reliable boot of Eoin Bradley. For years one of Derry's most prolific forwards, Bradley had chosen his soccer boots over the last year, playing Irish league with Coleraine, as Derry manager Brian McIver wasn't entirely enamoured by his dual status.
McIver then realised that no county can afford to have a player like Bradley idly watching for the summer. When he stepped up to nail the winning free for Derry, right at the end, his fifth score of the afternoon, Bradley’s presence felt every bit as irreplaceable as some said it was.
