Old and new put on great carnival

A weekend for the old guard and new faces to thrive in equal measure as the football and hurling championship once again refused to ride the straight and narrow.

First to drop were Tipperary, banished on Saturday by a Clare team that regained their passion and power, and then some. After the great escape at Pairc Ui Chaoimh six days before, they returned for a 70-minute display that steam-rolled over Tipperary 1-21 to 1-11, and the margin could have been doubled.

"When we're focused, there isn't a team that could beat us," said manager Ger Loughnane. Nobody at Pairc Ui Chaoimh could put up any argument; if so, highlight the scoring burst of 1-3 in the space of two minutes as evidence. The only thing to dwell on is perhaps the injury list that includes a battered Jamesie O'Connor.

Yesterday, Loughnane made the trip to Thurles for a preview of his Munster final opponents. Cork surprised both himself and Waterford, lifting themselves six points clear of the favoured challenge 024 to 1-15. Major exit number one. Except for Jimmy Barry-Murphy and his fellow Cork selectors, most reckoned that fielding six debutants was taking a gamble. Now they can look forward to Thurles on July 4th.

Major exit number two was a far more tame affair. Kildare's last championship experience ended with a demoralising turnaround at half-time and yesterday Tommy Lyons managed to raise something similar from Offaly in the second half of the Leinster football double-header at Croke Park. Nobody quite expected a jaded Kildare to leave without causing a fuss but as the always philosophical Mick O'Dwyer put it, "you have to accept victory and defeat in the same way".

Kildare were struggling with injuries before the game, with Niall Buckley the most obvious absence at midfield. "We just were not able to prepare the way I would have liked," added O'Dwyer. How much longer he remains the man to prepare them is now open to question.

For Lyons, the satisfying result was enough to give his players the week off. "We've played nothing but football for the last 10 weeks," he said. Still, the enticing clash with Meath awaits on July 4th.

Earlier, Westmeath suffered a decaying performance in the second half that allowed Laois to jump ahead 1-16 to 1-8 and set up their Leinster semi-final with Dublin on June 27th. After surviving all the controversy of the preliminaries, Westmeath had nothing in reserve when they needed it most and despite the fortunes of a penalty in the first half by Dessie Dolan, it turned out to be a surprisingly comfortable passage for Laois.

It was Roscommon's collapse at McHale Park in Castlebar, however, that provided the greatest sigh of the day. Tied on 0-6 with Mayo after the first half, they dropped their heads and crawled in losers 0-21 to 0-10.

"We never expected to win by that much," was about all manager John Maughan had to say. Swap win for lose and you probably have everything that Roscommon could say. They can now sit and wait until July 18th when they take their place in the Connacht final against the winners of Sligo and Galway

Meanwhile, Cavan and Derry will have to go through their Ulster football encounter all over again after the late, late appearance and even later score by Joe Brolly over five minutes into injury time left them at 2-15 apiece.

There was, however, no such dramatic climax in Clones at the second time of asking as Armagh held off the late challenge of Donegal.