The weekend started with talk of the most open All-Ireland race in years, and it ended with what feels like a four-week run-in to a Dublin-Kerry final.
Ultimately, the quarter-finals were a bit of a damp squib, with the two headline games ending in landslides and while there was plenty of excitement to Monaghan-Armagh, it was low on quality, much like Derry-Cork.
The fact that repeat pairings aren’t allowed in the semi-finals rinsed the drama from it. I’m sure that Derry and Monaghan would have loved to have drawn each other and there’d be one novel finalist guaranteed, and a blockbuster semi-final between the other two.
