Connacht on fire but provincials inch closer to flames

Of all the body-blows shipped by the poor, traduced provincial championships over the past decade or so, Kevin McStay's comments after Mayo's landmark win in Killarney may prove fatal.

"We took two weeks off, just the nature of the calendar. It's a funny one," McStay told RTÉ Sport afterwards.

"Giving lads an opportunity to get away, I know a lot of them got away to the sun. Got a break from us, fed up listening to us for a while. When we came back we doubled down in terms of, 'Come on lads, we've put a lot of work into this. We can't walk away from this, we have to plough on.' We got a brilliant reaction."

It read like the most compelling advertorial anyone has yet heard for throwing out the reserves in the provincials. Maybe treat them like Fergie did the League Cup - or whatever it happened to be called at the time - in his and United's pomp.

While the Mayo lads were lounging by the pool somewhere in the Mediterranean, their rivals were breaking tackles and recycling possession in the blustery surrounds of the Hyde.

McStay confirmed that this wasn't the plan all along - "sure how could you plan for it? You'd be mad." Certainly, any plan that asks Mayo people to contemplate a scenario where Roscommon supporters are leaping deliriously around Castlebar is probably a hard sell.

It nonetheless bolsters the narrative that the powers-that-be are resigned to the provincials weakening over time.

Having failed to jettison them in more cut and dried fashion at Congress when Proposal B came up a couple of years back, they are happy to do so via the Boiling Frog method, whereby they steadily diminish in relevance until the decision becomes a fait accompli.

At the end of the opening weekend of what the excellent Michael Murphy rather