Galway-Kilkenny - getting a firm grip of tasty rivalry

In the 13 or so years since Galway were invited into the Leinster championship - we say invited, GAA HQ mandated their arrival - they have met Kilkenny in numerous provincial deciders, though few with such a humming back-story as this.

Needless to say, the game has already been billed as 'The Handshake part 2' and there have been calls for the sideline feed to be included permanently in a mini-box in the bottom corner of the screen. A few suckers for melodrama have requested that RTÉ 2 show the sideline instead and that the game itself should be shunted over to the News channel.

In the aftermath of the clash in Salthill, many stout hurling men, a disproportionate amount from Kilkenny, were of the view that we were all making too much of this handshake business. That all the super slo-mo's were a bit unbecoming.

By international standards, of course, there's a strong case that we didn't make enough of it. The Yanks would already have commissioned a feature length documentary called 'The Handshake', tracing over the entirety of their relationship from Shefflin's teenage years to the present day, complete with breathless talking heads interjecting every five seconds.

Skip Bayliss and Stephen A. Smith would have spent two weeks shouting at each other about it, having taken diametrically opposing views on the subject (My money would be on Skip backing up the old stager Cody).

Over on Sky Sports, after Kilkenny were beaten at home by Wexford, poor Anthony Nash was lumbered with the wretched task of asking Cody how he felt about taking on Galway with Shefflin on the line... after all that's gone on, if you know what I mean, etc, etc...

"We're playing Galway, that's the way we look at it," was Cody's response - which is a reasonable