We saw Bill Murray in Thurles last weekend, being walked through the finer points of the ancient game by JP, while Noel Grealish TD loomed behind, ready to interject, no doubt. Truly, Semple's VIP area has never witnessed such cumulative star power in all its days.
Thirty years ago, before the Clare footballers hared onto the Croke Park turf for their biggest ever game, it was Kevin Costner who was knocking around, in town for a project he had in mind about Michael Collins - which never materialised, or at least when it did, Costner had nothing to do with it.
Clare midfielder Tom Morrissey didn't bump into him after, although one team-mate did.
"Frankie Griffin got that honour," Morrissey told RTÉ Sport this week. "I didn't meet him after but Frankie met him. 'Great ball game, number 5!' he said to him."
County Clare has enjoyed a bumper summer and while the hurlers, as ever, have hogged most of the limelight, the footballers, those diligent overachievers, have crept up on the flank once more, breaking into their first All-Ireland quarter-final since 2016. As in that season, they downed the Rossies in the last 12. Unlike then, this is one they have a reasonable chance of winning.
Strange to say but people of a certain vintage can still say that they saw the Clare footballers win a provincial title before their hurlers.
Clare hurling was not in rude health in 1992. As Anthony Daly recounted later on, that was the year they were advised to "stick to the traditional music" by Waterford (themselves no great shakes) corner- forward Kieran Delahunty in the closing stages of their poorly-attended Munster first round replay. Had the game occurred a couple of months later, Delahunty might have been able to tell the Clare lads to stick at the football.
A perusal of the records in the latter half of the 80s would not lead you to conclude that glory was at hand, though Morrissey insists there were straws in the wind.
The 80s offered slim pickings, the county paddling along in their usual habitat of football irrelevance - regrettably, their most notable game in the decades prior to '92 was the infamous Milltown Massacre, when Kerry's gilded quorum of forwards filled their boots, rustling up a whopping 9-21.
The five championship seasons prior to Clare's 1992 Munster triumph yielded a solitary championship victory - against Waterford in 1990.
John Maughan, still in his 20s and not long retired as a Mayo footballer, arrived in Clare to so little fanfare that only 11 turned up at his first training session.
The 1991 championship ended as abruptly as all its recent predecessors, and while Clare 2-12 Kerry 5-16 may not look too hot on the face of it, Morrissey, out of the loop that year, asserts that this doesn't tell the full tale.
"I was over in Cusack Park when they played Kerry in '91 in the Munster semi-final. And Kerry only bate them in the last 10 minutes of that game.
"It was about 2-12 apiece, until Kerry ran out in the last 10 minutes of that game. The next thing, Clare went on and won the All-Ireland B after that."
It was the wintry day in Ballinasloe in late 91 that offered the first conspicuous clues that Clare football was onto something.
Clare edged out Longford after extra-time in the All-Ireland B championship, the rather dowdy forerunner of the Tailteann Cup.
"When we got down to the hard work in 1992, the fact that we'd won something was a huge confidence booster," said Maughan later on.
The ebullient Morrissey joined the panel after the success and the momentum kept rolling. Promotion to Division 1 followed swiftly after - albeit in one of its old, convoluted guises, comprising of three groups of seven - teeing up a collision with Meath, still perceived as the unyielding kings of Gaelic football at the time.
"We came into that Munster final (in 92) after losing only one game out of 16. We got promoted into Division 1 of the National League. Meath beat us in a league quarter-final by two points, 0-08 to 0-06 in Ballinasloe. So, if we'd put it up to Meath, we'd put it up to Kerry. That was our belief.
"Meath were the team at that time, like. They were after being beaten in the All-Ireland final in '91. Meath were a good team, Brian Stafford, Colm O'Rourke. And we kept them to two points. So, the nucleus of the team was building."
After running Meath so close, a fragile Kerry team which was, simultaneously, callow and aging couldn't possibly be as daunting.
Still, tradition decreed there was little to see in the Gaelic Grounds. Kerry were reigning Munster champions, though they had flopped horribly in the All-Ireland semi-final against Down, and had demolished Cork in the semi-final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. There was tentative evidence that the colour was returning to their cheeks.
Not a bit of it. Clare, despite a penalty miss, nursed a one-point lead at half-time, second-half goals from Colm Clancy and Martin Daly (he of the back-heel point) powering them to a famous victory.
The final is best remembered by the younger generations for the birth of the "there won't be a cow milked" meme, while Jack O'Shea also finally bid adieu to the inter-county game after 16 years in situ.
"To be honest with you now, I didn't talk to anyone after the game," recalls Morrissey, when asked about his interactions with Kerry players at the final whistle.
"All the supporters that came onto the field. I had to get a guard to get me off the pitch! I wasn't able to walk, I wasn't able to talk. They were all clapping me on the back, and I hadn't an ounce of energy. It was a hot day. I said to some guard, 'will you get me off this field?'
"We'd a great team, we'd a great bunch of lads. Maughan brought unity to Clare. We had a lot of individuals back in the day, good footballers but individuals. But Maughan brought us all together.
"We weren't coming home without the Cup! That was the confidence John Maughan instilled in us. We had good footballers and we had power."
23 August 1992. Michael Carruth had just won Ireland's first Olympic gold for 36 years, prompting the price of the pint to fall to 1956 levels in the capital for one day only, the new English Premier League began its second week behind a TV paywall. And the Clare hordes arrived en masse for a first All-Ireland football semi-final since 1917 - and a first All-Ireland semi-final in either code since 1932.
"It was a great occasion in Clare. Half the county landed above in Dublin. We fancied our chances but things didn't work out. The supporters were unreal," says Morrissey.
The Dubs, having finally crawled out from under Meath's shadow, and without an All-Ireland final appearance in nine years, were apparently not overawed by the quality of the opposition coming down the tracks and giddily eyed a 'handy' All-Ireland title.
Reportedly, late on in the dismal 1992 All-Ireland semi-final between Donegal and Mayo - widely touted as one of the worst games ever played by the scribes - a few Dublin players in the stand left early, satisfied they would "beat the pick of those two." They hadn't even played Clare yet.
The game itself was a rollicking affair, probably more competitive than the Hill - or the Dublin players for that matter - had banked on.
"Vinny Murphy got two goals, he got the first after 15 minutes and then he got another controversial goal, but lookit he got it," says Morrissey. "He was above on top of (Aidan) Horse Moloney's back and he punched it into the net.
"But we came back from that, we got two goals ourselves. But the third goal rightly killed us. It was 3-14 to 2-12 - 2-12 would have won a lot of matches."
The Dubs, as we know, got a rude shock against Donegal in the final. Nonetheless, Morrissey is convinced the final was Clare's to lose, had they got there.
"We'd have beaten Donegal. If we'd have gotten over Dublin, we'd have beaten Donegal. 100%. Donegal had a good team too, now. But we would have beaten them.
"We were beaten in '93 in the first round but you make hay while the sun shines. We had a good team and it was just a bit of inexperience that cost us that day."
The current crop may still lack a Munster title for their efforts - the thought of winning one is even more fanciful in this era of elite breakaway - but their consistency has made them and their manager one of the most admired and widely praised groups in the game.
"Last Monday morning, I met Colm Collins in a hardware store," says Morrissey "I went up and congratulated him. What he's done with them bunch of players... they are overachieving. I couldn't see us beating Roscommon, we had a hoodoo against Meath, we beat them.
"They are very consistent, they are a great bunch. They'll fight for each other, they'll back each other up and they won't be one bit afraid of Derry."
Follow the All-Ireland Football Championship quarter-finals on Saturday, Derry v Clare (3.45pm) and Dublin v Cork (6pm), via our live blog on rte.ie/sport or on the RTÉ News app. Listen to live radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1
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