The GAA may have been thrust into an unfamiliar and often desolate landscape in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but we discovered on the RTÉ GAA Podcast that where there is difficulty there lies opportunity, and that there's an appetite for embracing a brave new world of water breaks, split seasons and streaming of club fixtures featuring even the most minor of minnows.
Wexford and Shelmaliers corner-back Simon Donohoe – fresh from leading his club to the hurling title in the Model County – joined Brendan Cummins, Mikey Stafford and Rory O'Neill as the quartet discussed the recent changes.
The water breaks that are now a feature of Gaelic games have seen hurling and football go from games of two halves to four-quarter affairs, and those periods can be as much about implementing tactical changes as they are about hydrating.
Winning teams can lose momentum, while it offers a period of respite for those trailing to rethink their strategy.
There's also the need for teams to be on guard as soon as the mini-intervals conclude, with a number of clubs caught napping by opponents who have sprung out of the blocks.
"It's a big change," Donohoe admitted.
"Players were only used to having their half-time break, but now you kind of have four quarters, which is probably the best way of looking at it.
"In the semi-final, Glynn were kind of giving us a good bating in the first quarter and the water break came at the right time and we regrouped and look where we are now. We're after winning.
"But in the final we were on top, the water break came, we had a puck-out and they got a goal straight off it and it could have changed the game.
"You have to prepare for water breaks now. It's a kind of a mental thing. It can work for you or it can go against you."
Cummins, who continues to play between the posts for Ballybacon-Grange in his 46th year, believes he's been on the winning and losing sides due to momentum shifts prompted by water breaks. But the All-Ireland winner regards their introduction as a positive overall.
"From a manager's point of view, you do probably have to have it set in your head roughly what you want to say," he said.
"You get your stats, you get all that stuff, but it's a really, really powerful minute and a half or two minutes that you have with your players in between every 15 minutes, and I think it's a great thing, to be honest.
"It does break it up obviously, for spectators, but from a manager's point of view, it's lovely to get that opportunity to touch base with players."
The virtues of a split season are well documented, with Donohoe revealing that even Wexford hurling boss Davy Fitzgerald was encouraging his charges' football endeavours, but it will pose organisational headaches in some counties more than others.
"There is merit in it, but how they will organise it, I'm not sure. Hopefully it will kick on from now.
"This is a strange year, you kind of need a normal year to measure how it can be done properly."
With the inter-county game still on an enforced hiatus, he divulged Fitzgerald's advice, saying: "Davy said give it a rattle, see what you can do, he hasn't touched base with us since.
"He just said, 'go ahead, I'll be watching the games, I'll see how you are playing, I'll be watching the form and I'll touch base with you whenever we are allowed to get back', so we haven't heard anything from him yet.
"But what he did say as well, was when you are gone at the hurling, don't let the football go because there are a lot of the lads who are from dual clubs and you can't be disrespecting the football people in your club either. You're going to be one of the fitter lads so you have to use your assets to try and help your football club."
Cummins explained the intricacies of the situation in the Premier County.
"In Tipp you have three groups of 16 split into four for the round-robin," he said. "That's 48 senior hurling teams. The football is split into four groups, so there's 16 in that.
"Every second weekend we've been going football and hurling.
"The positive is there's a flow of games and we're getting through it, but the problem with getting through it is... and we had it in out own club here, we played a dead rubber in the hurling where we had won our first two matches, played Shannon Rovers.
"The footballers had a crunch game last weekend, they played Loughmore, and because we had to play the majority of the players again for the sixth weekend in a row, when they came out for the seventh weekend in a row against Loughmore they got absolutely wiped and were dead on their feet.
"A constant game every week – football and hurling – it looks right good, but when you're in the middle of it, it's very, very tiring. Like I said, it is good to run it off, but there is a toll on the bodies behind it all.
"If we are splitting the season, I'd prefer to have the club first and the county second. It would allow inter-county managers to look at the club players and see what they're up to and then bring them in to the inter-county panel for the second half of the year."
Donohoe revealed in the aftermath of Sunday's victory how Shelmaliers fans had got behind the team the old-fashioned way prior to throw-in, but fans the length and breath of the county have also adapted and adopted the county's streaming service in considerable numbers.
Revenues from the platform have been officially estimated at between €60,000 and €70,000, which has provided the county with a major boon in the absence of gate receipts.
"It was brilliant," Donohoe said of the service.
"From the start we were only allowed 200 in – and that's including the players and the stewards – there were only about 100 tickets max left for supporters, which is not a whole lot when you've plenty of people in the parish who want to travel to it.
"The streaming service has been brilliant, even myself, if we weren't playing I could be watching and could have nearly two games going, watching matches, just because you've nothing else to do, I suppose.
"You can't go out, you can't go to the pub, you can't do anything, so I think the streaming service was a great hit with Wexford GAA and got people in the parish that couldn't go, they saw everything."
Indeed, the online coverage may have brought the armchair critics a little to close to the action, with Donohoe admitting: "If you met them on the road during the week, they were still able to tell you the mistake you made in the first half and what you were after doing."
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