It's been noted several times before, and it's absolutely zero consolation for Monaghan supporters, but David Clifford's wondrous goal really rescued us from a miserably anti-climactic pair of Super 8s matches on Saturday week.
It was an 'escape from a room with no doors' variety of escape. With a few minutes left, it looked impossible that they could rustle up a goal.
The high, looping ball into Kieran Donaghy had been their salvation before but Donaghy is probably in the twilight of his career now and has already endured a frustrating afternoon and surely Monaghan's defensive arrangements will be too sophisticated to concede against th---
Oh, look.
Kerry get a goal at the death to equalise in Clones! What a game! Make sure to watch all the highlights tonight on the Sunday Game. #RTEGAA pic.twitter.com/UYF6lANFhQ
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 22, 2018
So Kerry, despite all their many tactical confusions, as outlined by Aidan O'Rourke here, remain in the championship. They are also spared the indignity of hosting a dead rubber in Killarney in under a fortnight's time. The crowd for a game under those circumstances could probably have been accommodated in the Tralee Sports Complex basketball arena.
However, while Kerry stay in the hunt for the moment, their fate is no longer in their hands.
Both Galway and Dublin are in a novel position in Gaelic football terms. They can afford to lose, knowing they're still bound for the All-Ireland football championship semi-final. This is a new one.
Dublin's match is of no consequence, but any mention of the possibility of them losing will induce a snort from all concerned, including, probably, members of the opposition team. So, we'll proceed.
Galway's match against Monaghan in Salthill, on the other hand, has enough resting on it that Kerry supporters, 130 miles away in Killarney, will likely be nervously checking their phones for the score until the closing minutes (RTÉ live blog, by the way. Can't go wrong) in a manner reminiscent of relegation dog-fighters on the final day of the Premier League season.
Kerry are hopelessly dependent on the Galway football team - on their determination to both avoid Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final and maintain their own winning habit.
For many, those two factors should ensure that Galway will go full pelt at the game, treating it as they would any do-or-die encounter.
In the days since Sunday, some patrons, most especially, and perhaps understandably, those from Kerry, have become quite irate and moralistic at the suggestion that Galway might 'do an England' on the final weekend and give their second string a run out against Malachy O'Rourke's team.
But is it so unreasonable that Galway, who've already witnessed a key midfielder shipping a season ending injury, and with a first All-Ireland semi-final appearance in seventeen years coming a week later, might consider giving a host of their front rank players the weekend off?
And is it worth exposing leading players to the risk of injury just to put off playing against Dublin until the All-Ireland final?
Indeed, there's an argument for suggesting that playing Dublin in an All-Ireland semi-final would be less psychologically daunting than colliding with them in a final.
Galway great Sean Óg de Paor, wing back on the All-Ireland winning teams of 1998 and 2001, reckons that whatever XV Kevin Walsh selects will go "all out" to win the game.
But he also suspects that Walsh will use the final game to give a starting slot to a number of players who haven't started in recent games.
"I think what Galway will do is they'll go all out to win because momentum is important and you can't turn it off and on again just like that.
"But I think Kevin will make changes to the team. So I think we'll find that some of the players who haven't started recent games - the likes of Barry McHugh, Gary O'Donnell, Adrian Varley and Sean Armstrong perhaps - might get a starting jersey for Monaghan.
"It wouldn't be a completely different team. I suspect there'll be about three or four changes and the subs will be rolled on throughout the game.
"But the team that's picked will go all out to win because it's a dangerous game to play to mess with momentum like that."
For De Paor, the concept of the easier side of the draw, which received so much airplay in the UK press during the World Cup, doesn't apply here and will occupy no space in the heads of the players. (Of course, Galway's situation is different from England in that winning rather than losing will guarantee the less daunting route to the final).
The idea that either semi-final would present them with an easy game is farcical and, either way, Galway can't be set on thinking up ways to avoid the Dubs.
"It's fine for supporters to speculate down the line but I'd be very surprised if that forms any part of their discussion in the dressing room.
"You can't be thinking 'let's avoid the Dubs'"
"The Dubs, of course, are going for four in a row and the talk is that they could be one of the best teams of all time.
"But I think they're beatable. And I would say they're probably more beatable in a semi-final than in a final.
"Galway would have learned a good bit from playing Dublin in the league final... look, here I am talking about Galway-Dublin and we haven't got that. We might not even get to play Dublin this year. The players will be focused on Monaghan."
If all this sounds a bit gloomy to readers down in Kenmare and Listowel then De Paor reckons that Galway's panel depth is such that the team he envisages starting the game would still be well capable of beating Monaghan at home.
"I would think so (Galway will win). If you look at Galway's stats, they've only lost one match all year.
"And the team is so well coached now that any guy who comes in will be so well versed in what he has to do that they'll probably slot in seamlessly.
"You might find that it (team changes) doesn't make that much difference to the team's performance levels."
For Galway, it's a first All-Ireland semi-final appearance since 2001 when Matthew Clancy's late goal turned the tables on Derry.
There followed 17 years of at times mystifying underachievement in which the county, in De Paor's estimation, was either too slow, or too stubborn, to react to the changes which were occurring in the game.
The current decade even has promising echoes of the 1990s. They spent the early part of each decade barely visible in the wilderness. There followed a period of incremental improvement from the mid-decade onwards before they abruptly and unexpectedly ascended to the ranks of All-Ireland contenders in the penultimate year.
Having been regarded as a quarter-final side and no more at the beginning of the year, they've won 11 from 13 competitive games in 2018 and are now considered by many pundits the likeliest county to topple Dublin this season.
Is De Paor surprised by the rate of progress in 2018?
"I'm not really surprised because if you look at the players on the team, a lot of the boxes were ticked in terms of underage success and club success," De Paor argues.
"And Galway are just so well drilled and so well coached at the moment but what separates them I think from the rest of the teams still in the championship is that they have the firepower up front to really hurt teams.
"Monaghan have Conor McManus but Galway have two blue chip forwards (Comer and Walsh) in that attack - plus Ian Burke who might not score heavily but will lay on scores for others. To be honest, I get excited just thinking about it."
De Paor's towering former teammate is the man who's led Galway back to the business stages of the competition but the role of coach Paddy Tally quite the cause celebre in the media.
Tally, a former Tyrone backroom coach and Sigerson Cup winning manager, has received much of the credit for the team's progress and most of the blame from those who bemoan their style of play.
"Kevin, I don't know how he does it. This is his fourth year in the job after five years with Sligo. He, along with Brian Silke and the rest of his managerial team have done a terrific job.
"Normally, in most managerial reigns, the performance graph shoots up in the first year but this has been a slow, steady, continuous progression.
"The big thing is that you dont hear anything coming out of the camp. Paddy Tally's influence might be huge or it might not but we can't know because nothing escapes out.
"I mean, I teach with Sean Armstrong - and not that you'd be asking him or anything - but you just don't hear any loose talk about what goes on in there.
"The easy assumption is that Paddy Tally has come in this year and so he's responsible for the refined defensive system they've operated, and that may well be the case, but there's no information slipping out so we don't really know one way or the other.
"The big thing with Galway is that as a traditional county - and we are third in the list (of All-Ireland wins) behind Kerry and Dublin - we were slow to adopt the modern style of playing football. And now we're doing it and it's bearing fruit.
"I mean for years we were still trying to play the old way and it wasn't working."
