GAA'S SUMMER OF LOVE

15 reasons why it's shaping up to be the best Championship in many, many years

- Roy CURTIS REPORTS

LOUTH awoke on Monday to a world domed by joy, a tribe unbound from all their underclass yesterdays.

For 68 years the county itched with a desire for fulfilment it couldn't quite scratch.

Then Monday dawned and for their delirium-drunk hearts, the music of deliverance chiming confirmed Ger Brennan's red planet was tapering onto the sweetest orbit they had ever known.

Craig Lennon's wonder-goal, Sam Mulroy's eloquent risingup above a concerning early second-half stutter, his profound victory speech, that final whistle feeling that they were sailing weightless, none of it had been a dream.

They really had arrived at the sun-kissed epicentre of the GAA's summer of love.

Ennis on Saturday night felt molten, Cusack Park bursting, atmospheric, tense, claustrophobic, wild. Ten months on from their epic All-Ireland coronation, an undertow of anxiety invaded Clare bones.

There was a new sheriff in town. John McGrath was a portrait of gunslinger sangfroid, the Tipp Wyatt Earp, a blue hurling helmet for a Stetson, a length of ash his argument-ending Colt 45.

The architecture of the McGrath siblings' minds is designed differently. Greatness constructed not on modish buzz words - pace, power - but on timeless cerebral qualities: vision, artistic touch, hurling intelligence, enduring class.

Elder brother Noel conducted the orchestra. From eight possessions, John fired 2-3.

Tipp had their first Munster Championship victory in 748 days. And, after John's two-year injury-cursed shadow-play, a triumph of redemption.

Tomorrow it's Waterford, another thirsting to turn the page to a new day.

"All our love is flooding back" Kerry All Ireland winner Darran O'Sullivan speaking for so many on Off The Ball last Monday, energised by the most captivating provincial Championships in decades, the first submitting to Gavin's Law.