When the Hurling Gods shine upon you.....

There are days in the GAA season which make you get down on your hands and knees and beg forgiveness for all those days you turned over to watch some pedestrian mid-Premiership soccer tie. The Prodigal Son has returned you say, no need to kill the fatted calf, just the subscription to Sky Sports.
There have been many memorable scenes to precede this climactic penultimate act, but few could've been as unpredictable as this. Limerick had long played the tormented Hamlet figure, feigning six years of madness, before finally dethroning their King Claudius.
Limerick vs. Waterford was one of those days. Had anyone in either county expected the game to turn out this way? Could anyone have forecasted Limerick would score five goals? Or that two high kings of their game, John Mullane and Paul Flynn, would be substituted like sacrificial lambs to the ye Gods-like performances of the Limerick players?

Mark Lawrensen and The Bearded Lady

Will former Liverpool player Mark Lawrensen wake up in the middle of the night laughing at the rich irony of his mockery of Rafael Benitez's new goatee? The words stones, those in glasshouses, pot, kettle, calling eachother black all spring to mind as the man who hid his upperlip for all of the 80s under a moustache thick enough to hide an Al Qaeda suspect, passed judgement on a radical facial styling of Liverpool's general.

Perhaps since shearing himself of his handlebar hair sculpture several years ago, he had also shorn all memories of being unable to eat his breakfast without collecting cornflakes around his mouth.

(above left) Mark Lawrensen having trouble with American security.
(above right) Rafael Benitez, Liverpool manager