Never before could one man cause so much amusement at his expert . . . pause whilst I wipe away a tear at the use of that word . . . berating of the men, nay heroes, who turned a tidal wave of Blue expectation around and decapitated an overblown monster, but not before bloodying its nose and ruffling its hair for good measure.

In that one article, I found an almost childlike pleasure in taking my young son's crayon . . . something I assume Hayes still relies on for his comic masterpieces . . . and circling 16 sections in which your myopic analyst was either erroneous in his assumptions or laughable in his predictions.

As he started his column with two questions, I would ask the Sunday Tribune only one: Did anyone at all bother looking at an article on the same page by a certain Kieran Shannon, in which the bedrock of talent and burgeoning potential of Mayo football was examined, understood, and flagged up for observation?

Shannon asked the question: ". . . which planet is Liam on. . . ?"

However, in truth the fluency, style and panache of Sunday 27 August has seldom ever been seen in Croker and was matched only by the effort and stamina of real warriors (from both teams admittedly . . . though someone could do with mentioning to Ciaran Whelan that the International Rules hasn't started yet). This alone would leave Hayes struggling to equate the Planet Gaelic with the "whack 'em, rack 'em and stack 'em" of the old school of Meath.

Now if only the westerners can repeat the dosage to that other pair of 'expert', 'off the ball' foul merchants, then mayhap the reason it is still an amateur sport . . . because it is played for love not profit; check your Latin Liam . . .

that will once again be understood by the common man.

Happy to discuss!

A Mac Threinfhir, The Quoile, Downpatrick, Co Down.