All-Ireland final week: Nursing the good hurl and dodging the energy sappers

All-Ireland final week. The dream is closer than ever to becoming a reality. Especially when it's your first final, the feeling that this is finally happening.

All those days of playing in the back with your brothers, sisters, friends and neighbours or down at the field playing this moment out in your head and here it is now. But nothing in this world can prepare you for that wall of noise and emotion that hits you when you run out on the pitch on All-Ireland final day, you feel like you could fly as you run out that tunnel.

No matter how many times you experience it, it never gets old or boring.

To those of us who are blessed to have felt it, it’s a feeling I’ll always treasure, I get goosebumps when I try to describe it and I know when I go to my eternal reward some of the last things I’ll think of will be my family and those magical days running out on to Croke Park on the biggest day.

How lucky we are to be in that club.

But I’m going to try and bring you into the world of a player on the week of the build-up to that magical moment.

Depending on the player you are, the week can be the longest ever or the quickest. For those that just want it to happen, we don’t want to chat to anyone, just want the ball to be thrown in. This week can be a tough one. The other player will relish the build-up and the bit of craic that goes with it.

I was the latter. I always enjoyed the craic and people calling to our house to collect their tickets and wish you well. It’s funny the emotion that comes out in people around these times.

People you meet week in week out, maybe even daily, but the emotion that’s in them wishing you all the best before an All-Ireland is like that of sending someone off to war. I have seen people cry wishing others