After pole-vaulting into the future over the past month with the glitzy new hurling format, we bathe in tradition this weekend with the arrival of the Connacht football final.
The format in Connacht has been tweaked a little this year.
In the old days - aka, last year - it used to take over two months to run off six matches, a pace of completion which jars heavily with what we've just witnessed in the hurling championship.
As it stands, the western province still kicks off in the very far west altogether. The action begins in the Bronx on the first Sunday of May, before most people have even realised the season has started. It used to drag on until the second Sunday of July but now, under the new condensed calendar, it's done and dusted in a much brisker timeframe and over by mid-June.
The GAA, in their wisdom, has always passed up the chance to throw on a gaudy opening ceremony for what is, after all, the beginning of the championship season.
But imagine the possibilities. Inviting Diana Ross down to lip sync the national anthem before asking her to try curling an O'Neill's over the black spot from close range. And then an umpire performing a stately wave of the white flag after she shanks it horribly off to the left, the ball eventually colliding with the wooden stanchion holding up the protective netting behind the goal.
Roscommon and Galway meet in the Connacht final for the third year running
No, such pomp and ceremony doesn't sit easy alongside the earthy charms of the Connacht football championship.
Connacht, like the rest of them, has its peculiarities.
Traditionally, the last team to trot out in the championship is the Connacht side who got a bye into the semi-final.
Two years ago, Galway only began their summer campaign on the 18th of June (the same day Ireland were destroyed by Belgium in Bordeaux, incidentally).
The province can still offer an almost offensively easy passage to the Connacht final for one team and, in 2018, that team is Roscommon, who were asked to beat permanent residents of Division 4, Leitrim, to get to this point. A 14-point win in Carrick-on-Shannon has taken them to within a game of the Super 8s.
The demise of the provincial championships has been foretold for a long time. Progressive types often curse them as a barrier to reform. Recent Leinster and Munster championships haven't done much for their image. The former, in particular, now stands as exhibit A in the case for their removal.
Is there still a place for them?
If the thought leaders of the association want players from Roscommon and Sligo to feel more enthused about committing to their county panels, then abolishing the Nestor Cup seems like a strange place to start.
The GPA apparently favour a Champions League style format, a testament to the power of groupthink and fashionable buzz-phrases within the organisation. That colourless and unimaginative format solves none of the problems which currently animate people and robs middle-ranked counties of their most realistic chance of glory and silverware.
If the thought leaders of the association want players from Roscommon and Sligo to feel more enthused about committing to their county panels, then abolishing the Nestor Cup seems like a strange place to start.
Roscommon are one of the counties that best illustrate the value of the provincial championships.
Galway-Mayo may be the traditional Connacht final, the western El Classico, but the Rossies have always been the wildcard in the province.
They live for punishing complacency in the big two (Galway have always been more vulnerable to that for whatever reason) and their historical haul of Nestor Cups is more than respectable.
They've won 23 in total – 18 more than Sligo and Leitrim combined – and have snaffled at least one provincial title in every decade since the 40s.
Enda Smith celebrates Roscommon's Connacht title win in Salthill last year
In fact, about seven years ago, Liam Hayes, in a fairly brazen attempt to tweak Mayo noses, said that Connacht didn't have a big two as Mayo weren't sufficiently ahead of Roscommon to justify the tag. The argument hasn't aged terribly well in the years since, truth be told, and, even back then, it sounded like the view of someone bizarrely rooted in a 1970s time warp.
The Rossies don't win Connacht often enough to take it for granted and yawn their way through the presentation ceremony but still win it enough that they're never without hope. After all, one of the most unpromising Roscommon sides of all time managed to whip the Nestor Cup from under the noses of an expectant Sligo back in 2010.
The euphoria which greeted last year's unexpected blitz of Galway at Pearse Stadium kept the internet going for a couple of days. Needless to say, they brought the Cup back to Paddy Joe Burke's barber in Roscommon Town – which feels like the ideal venue for a future GAA chat show (let the record show that I came up with the idea) – and we heard about how they blew their rivals into Galway Bay.
"Call me a Hydebound conservative all you want, but one suspects that topping Group H in a round robin Champions League format from the second seed position wouldn't generate quite the same tribal roar"
Call me a Hydebound conservative all you want, but one suspects that topping Group H in a round robin Champions League format from the second seed position wouldn't generate quite the same tribal roar.
The retro feel to Sunday's decider is heightened by the venue. The stock neutral option for Connacht finals back in the 90s and noughties, time hasn't been kind to Hyde Park. The Connacht Council have made it exquisitely clear they regard the venue as unsuitable for provincial finals, unless upgrades are made.
After the semi-final win against Leitrim, Kevin McStay did the managerial post-match interview equivalent of banging on tables and insisted that Roscommon would not be playing the Connacht final anywhere other than Hyde Park. They didn't care what anyone else was doing, they would be turning up at Hyde Park on 17 June. They weren't going to no ground only Hyde Park on Connacht final day. End of story.
Unless, of course, he hastily added, if Sligo won the semi-final, they'd happily go to Castlebar for the game.
The Roscommon county board took a more diplomatic approach and managed to secure the decider for Hyde Park, subject to a list of conditions.
McStay's team may have moving heaven and earth to ensure the game is played in Roscommon town but home advantage has counted for very little in this fixture in modern times and, in fact, has often gone the other way. Roscommon's two championship wins over Galway in the 21st century occurred in Tuam and Salthill respectively, while Galway haven't lost a championship game to Roscommon in Hyde Park since the 1990 Connacht final.
As for Galway, the present generation haven't been accumulating Connacht titles at such a rate that they can afford to be too snooty about the prospect of collecting another this weekend. Only Paul Conroy and Gareth Bradshaw from their starting XV have won two Connacht senior medals and both are playing a decade at this stage.
Galway's fans tend to be the more demanding and less easily sated by the Nestor Cup. Two years ago, their traumatic quarter-final loss to Tipperary in Croke Park completely overshadowed the achievement of winning a first Connacht title in eight years.
The last time Hyde Park held a Galway-Roscommon Connacht final was the 1998 replay
For Roscommon, by contrast, there is probably no Croker humiliation so great that it could take the sheen off a Connacht title. At the end of the day, a Connacht title is a Connacht title and they ain't taking that away from you.
Twice in this decade, Kevin Walsh managed teams have received nasty shocks from Roscommon in the Connacht decider.
Galway, however, give every indication of being a flintier outfit than last year. They've conceded only two goals in ten games in 2018 and their young full-back Sean Andy O'Ceallaigh is unlikely to be given the runaround his predecessor was in Salthill last July. On top of that, they've oodles of talent in attack and they were let off the leash against Sligo to devastating effect a fortnight ago.
But Roscommon have been in lively form themselves this year, with Conor Devaney, Donie Smith and the returning Cathal Cregg all starring in an absurdly high-scoring Division 2 win over Cavan in April. And both these sides will be playing top tier league football next spring.
Should Roscommon upset the odds and beat Galway at home for the first time in 28 years, the ensuing celebrations will surely underline the fact that any future championship restructure would have to incorporate the provinces.
Follow the Connacht final this weekend via our live blog on RTÉ.ie and the News Now App, watch exclusive television coverage on RTÉ2 or listen to exclusive national radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1.
