These are the days the split season hath made.
Time was, the early part of the GAA championships were taken up with one big match a weekend, usually in hurling, with maybe a semi-decent football one thrown in as well to keep them happy Up North.
Yet here we are, hurtling headlong into two days of genuinely consequential games, in both codes and in all four provinces. We will rejoice and be glad in them.
Where to start?
Just for pig iron, we’ll head out west to Mayo v Galway in Castlebar, where the expectations game has turned into a slow bicycle race since the league finals. If you had your ear to the ground in either county this week, you would be stunned to find out that these are two of the top six teams in the betting for the All-Ireland. Will they keep it kicked out to each other at all, at all?
On the Mayo side, the pessimism was lifted ever so slightly with the naming of the team after three weeks of a news vacuum. Though Rob Hennelly, Paddy Durcan and Bryan Walsh will miss out, other injury doubts Oisín Mullin and Eoghan McLaughlin are included. Cillian O'Connor comes back in for his first championship start since the 2020 All-Ireland final. Diarmuid O'Connor has been named on the bench.
Across the border, it is expected that Galway wing backs Cillian McDaid and Dylan McHugh will play after missing the Division Two final through niggles of their own and that Shane Walsh will start after coming off the bench in that game.
But Mayo have won their last three championship meetings so Galway folk aren’t checking out the July market for Dublin hotel rooms just yet either.
One of them has to win, much as it will astonish their followers when it comes to pass. And when they do, they will find that it was worth the bother.
The strictures of the latest new system – the fourth different structure for the football championship since 2017 – mean there is no such thing as a handy run through the qualifiers any more. Whoever loses this weekend has six weeks to wait for their next game and could very well have to go to somewhere like Armagh or Ballybofey to play it.
Of course, the same applies in reverse to Donegal and Armagh, who meet in the Ulster quarter-final tomorrow. There would be needle to this one however it came to pass but the disciplinary shenanigans that have dominated the build-up has set the table for quite the bunfight.
Armagh won't have Ciarán Mackin, who was one of the finds of the league, but otherwise virtually all the principals are present and correct and pawing the dirt. Maybe keep referee Maurice Deegan in your prayers tonight.
Right tune
In hurling, the weekend has a few tectonic encounters down for decision. Chief among them is the year’s first – and presumed far from last – meeting of Waterford and Limerick tonight in the Gaelic Grounds.
Some of the sting may have been slightly taken out of this one by the fact that both teams won their opener last Sunday and don’t need to break out all their instruments in search of the right tune just yet. But they probably won’t want to be getting too cute about it all either.
Aussie Gleeson and Jamie Barron have been left off the Waterford team again – at least that's the official line on it anyway and Liam Cahill hasn't been much of a dummy-team merchant so far.
Kyle Hayes definitely won't appear for Limerick, having been left out of the 26 with the injury he picked up against Cork. So tonight is neither the be-all nor the end-all. More the be here and see now.
Of more immediate consequence are the clashes between Wexford and Dublin in Wexford Park and Clare and Tipperary in Thurles. The Leinster match is likely to have a huge bearing on who finishes third in that province’s round-robin, while in Munster the home side can’t really afford another defeat after going down by four points to Waterford last weekend. Meanwhile, TJ Reid returns to the starting line-up for Kilkenny against Laois.
Piece by piece, an early picture of the championship is being laid out. You may say that summer officially starts next weekend. But we know it’s already here.
