An awkward week for a lot of people, especially the columnists. I'm sure we have your sympathy.
We barely have time to digest the weekend's league finals - which included one of the most thrilling games seen at Croke Park for many a year - and suddenly the championship is already upon us.
Westmeath are facing the Mayo conundrum from last year. Taking the field a week after winning a league final and Dessie Dolan is understandably peeved at the situation.
Going forward, it's difficult to see how this situation can be sustained. It's imperative we find a week from somewhere in the cluttered calendar. The whole thing is too squashed.
My reputation as a tipster didn't exactly receive a shot in the arm on league final weekend (at least Laois won to stave off a whitewash).
The one thing that Sunday confirmed is that Derry are right there in the mix for the biggest prize and they are not one bit afraid of Dublin.
In reality, it should never have gotten as far as penalties. Derry scored two second-half goals but they had four more clear goal chances on top of that. They were the far superior team over the course of the 90 minutes of play.
Dublin hung in there and made the most of their lucky breaks. The free at the end of normal time was incredibly soft.
We've all raved about Dublin's scintillating attacking play over the course of the spring but the game probably highlighted some vulnerabilities further back the field that Dessie Farrell may need to examine.
It was significant that the two Derry goals in normal time originated from long kickouts, the ball breaking behind the Dublin midfield and suddenly the Ulster champions had open country in front of them.
On the first, Lachlan Murray broke the ball down with three Dubs rising to contest and Brendan Rogers slipped a perfect pass inside for Ethan Doherty.
On the second, the Dublin midfield was cleared by the kickout, Doherty himself looped a fist pass in behind for the rampant Eoin McEvoy to rattle home.
With six minutes left, Odhrán Lynch found Rogers loitering unmarked behind the Dublin fetchers and he kick-passed to Murray, who probably should have fired home the goal to seal the victory there and then.
Watching this, it felt a bit like a throwback to the 2014 semi-final against Donegal, incidentally another year when the Dubs played champagne football going forward but left yawning gaps at the back.
In retrospect, we had seen some evidence of this in other games. Recall the recent Kerry game, where the watching public stared in awe at the Dublin forwards. However, on another night, if David Clifford was hot, he could have had 1-04 in the first half.
It's the flipside of Dublin's high-risk press. It creates such pressure and can suffocate teams so well but it does allow gaps in behind. The question here is whether they can shore things up without dampening their attacking vigour.
It's probably a wake-up call for Farrell and his team, in that respect, and arguably, not an unwelcome one. I know he was quick to insist in the aftermath that he hadn't bought into the hype during the league that the championship was a formality.
And the caveat here is that they were without Stephen Cluxton, Michael Fitzsimons, James McCarthy, Lee Gannon etc. There's a lot of experience and nous still to return to that defence.
Beforehand, I didn't think Derry had enough to beat Dublin but the way they cut them open, their hunger to win the ball back, the speed and fluency with which they countered was so impressive.
For me, the real standout was Ethan Doherty. He must have had a hand in at least 50% of their scores, whether it was delivering a vital hand pass or kick pass or through winning dirty ball. He covers some amount of ground and is the epitome of everything Derry do well at the moment.
One question now is whether the prospect of a potentially energy-sapping run in Ulster is of use to them.
Given the centrality of the Ulster Championship to the teams involved and their own stated ambition of winning every trophy on the table, you'd imagine they'll go for the three-in-a-row.
But Sam is the real target for Derry now and their primary aim should be to make sure they're peaking in that July period.
Ulster is definitely a target for Armagh, who are still struggling to get their hands on silverware.
I know the Division 2 final, in particular, is often pegged as a completely meaningless game but it's another loss in Croke Park for the Orchard County.
They had excuses in the form of sickness and difficulty getting pitches to train on - which seems bizarre to me given it's the week of a national final - but Donegal weren't exactly without their own issues.
The Connacht championship commences this week with Mayo and Galway bound for foreign shores, New York and London respectively.
The New York trip is always a novel one even if the astro-turf pitch is hard on the legs. I played there twice in the Connacht SFC in 2014 and 2019.
Before that, we played a challenge match there in 2012 after winning the FBD League - a tradition which was knocked on the head long before the split-season would have rendered it a pipe dream in any case.
It would be a stretch to describe the post-FBD trip to the Big Apple as serious business.
To emphasise this, I think we were all drunk playing that game. We finished late - or should that be early - the night before. I arrived back into the hotel room at about eight in the morning and then played the full-game at 2pm in 30 degree heat.
I was young enough that I could still do it then. Although, James Horan had to check my pulse on the bus to see if I was still alive.
I emerged unscathed although Ger Cafferkey was a victim of the surface that day. He took a hit, landed on the deck hard, dislocated his shoulder and had to be rushed to the hospital.
The weekend of the Connacht game in the New York is part championship match and part fundraising summit. There are functions, banquets, fundraisers, with the Mayo diaspora all coming flooding in to the Bronx.
The 2014 game in Gaelic Park was reported upon by Sky Sports News, their first standard GAA report after they had just secured the TV rights. The silver-haired presenter credited a fella called 'Sillian' O'Connor (soft 'c') with "a hat-trick of goals" and said we had 'Lay-trim' next up in the 'Conn-awt' championship. ("Spoken like a true Lay-trim man," was one tweet I saw.)
Our last trip in '19 coincided with Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican festival (5 May) and naturally the 7,000 strong contingent of Mayo fans latched onto that.
Any corner of New York you walked around that weekend, you met tonnes of Mayo supporters. It was bedlam. We ended up staying a bit away from it all in First Avenue. But my wife was telling me it was like being at home, she met everybody from home in the bars and restaurants.
The London game is great craic as well. You head out to Ruislip, play the match with the smell of barbecue and Magners wafting onto the pitch from the marquee nearby.
New York pulled off a landmark win over Leitrim last year and came close to shocking Sligo the year before. We've seen London reach the Connacht final and take scalps in the past.
But these are two tall orders for them and don't expect them to threaten a shock this weekend.
Andy Moran and co had a great league campaign but again, it's a tough ask to face into a big championship game eight days later. Especially after picking a few seniors for last night’s historic win over the Mayo Under-20s. It's hard to see them turning over a Sligo team on an upward curve under my old coach Tony McEntee, with Kevin McLoughlin in their backroom team.
You don't get too much love from Tony - you either dust yourself down and get on with it or you can piss off. I think Sligo as a group probably needed an injection of that mentality.
I know Tony upset a good few Sligo players at the beginning but he would have seen their attitude as an area of improvement, coming from an environment like our one. He's doing great things there.
They finished the league with a statement win over Westmeath and will be gunning for promotion and possibly a serious run at the Tailteann Cup this year. I think they'll have too much for Leitrim.
Follow a live blog on New York v Mayo in the Connacht Football Championship on Sunday from 8pm on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app
