Enjoy the games - it’s already later than you think

The season always ends too quickly. This is not a new thing – it always did, even when it went on until September.

Yet there is something bracing about the realisation that on the weekend before the solstice, we have only five intercounty hurling matches left in the year. Come teatime, that number will be down to three. Little wonder they’re expecting upwards of 35,000 in Thurles on Saturday. They know the bell will go for last orders all too soon.

On the bill are the two All-Ireland quarter finals, Galway v Cork and Wexford v Clare. The build-up has been dominated by the apparently annual routing of the GAA’s disciplinary procedures, with Cianan Fahy of Galway and Rory Hayes and Peter Duggan of Clare all cleared to play late on Wednesday night. Technicalities have released all three to play despite their obvious transgressions in the respective provincial finals a fortnight ago.

Tellingly, there is virtually nobody in either county who will argue with a straight face that any of the incidents in question weren’t red-card offences. But somewhere along the way, that simple and seemingly obvious fact has somehow managed to become beside the point.

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An email mistakenly sent at the wrong stage in proceedings is all it has taken to clear the players, without any adjudication or even conversation as to the substance of the charges. It’s all pretty ludicrous and drearily unique to the GAA.

Does it take any of the gloss off the double-bill in Thurles? Probably not. Most likely adds to it, in fact. Hayes and Duggan have been two of Clare’s most vital performers all through the year, Fahy is the sort of gamey, coltish forward presence that Galway have lacked since Johnny Glynn decided to make a life in New York. All three are an adornment to proceedings in Semple Stadium. Still don’t make it right.

Ho-hum. You know the championship is starting to ebb when the games thin out as dramatically as they have this weekend. A fortnight ago, there were 11 inter-county matches on the slate between football qualifiers, provincial hurling finals and the Tailteann Cup. This weekend, there are four.

The Tailteann Cup takes centre stage in Croke Park tomorrow, with Cavan facing Sligo and Westmeath playing Offaly. With all the early fretting over whether or not teams would try a leg in the competition having long since dissipated, we are down to the serious business of the last four now. They have a peak summer Sunday to themselves with no competition for eyeballs from anywhere else. The Joe McDonagh counties must be thrilled.

Offaly’s week has been clouded by the cruciate injury picked up by one of their stalwarts, Niall Darby, at training. Sligo, who came through a penalty shoot-out against Leitrim, and Westmeath are both gunning to show that they don’t belong at this level. Storylines everywhere you look, added chapters to these counties’ summers that would have evaporated into nothing any other year.

Enjoy the games. It’s later than you think.