T his year's All-Ireland football semi-finals provided marvellous entertainment, and when you add in minor games of great attacking quality, the 145,000 supporters who paid in over the two Sundays would not have had as much enjoyment at another sports occasion anywhere in the world.

Michael Lally was a not only a fine actor and a household name, but he was, in his youth, a very good footballer.

He didn't play his first full senior inter-county game until he was 30, but Tipperary hurler Cormac Bonnar still managed to rack up the honours. In four years the full-forward won three Munster championships, two All-Irelands and two All-Stars.

INCONSISTENCY is a plague on many teams -- if something of a requirement to keep sport interesting and unpredictable -- and for the first half of Brian Cody's management career his selections were afflicted too. Fallible enough, at least, to have Kilkenny move naturally in the company of ordinary mortals. If you pricked them, did they not bleed, like the rest of us?

IF, or maybe when, the sports capital programme is resurrected by this government, or indeed the next one, a radically different approach to how money is distributed will be required.

He had his time in Australian rules, but Martin Clarke plays Gaelic football not unlike an American quarterback too.

A JULY evening in The Marshes back in the middle of the last decade, the Down footballers being put through their paces by Pete McGrath. The atmosphere is light and convivial. You see Mickey Linden alighting from the dressing room, instantly corralled by a gaggle of schoolkids, Tommy McGivern -- the team's evergreen kitman -- throwing his head up and smiling. Tommy has seen it a thousand times.

T his year's All-Ireland football semi-finals provided marvellous entertainment, and when you add in minor games of great attacking quality, the 145,000 supporters who paid in over the two Sundays would not have had as much enjoyment at another sports occasion anywhere in the world.

Michael Lally was a not only a fine actor and a household name, but he was, in his youth, a very good footballer.

Kerry 2-13