My heart says Tipp and I'll just leave it at that

Moving Day in the hurling world.

In life you can have excuses or success, but you can never have both.

To start I want to look back before we look forward.

Last Saturday night in Pairc Ui Chaoimh was one of the best sporting occasions I have attended.

I was lucky enough to see Manchester United play Real Madrid in a Champions League game in 2003 where Ronaldo (Brazilian one) scored a hat trick, David Beckham came off the bench and played his last European game for United and the score was 4-3 and even that wouldn't hold a candle to what I was privileged enough to witness from a bunch of so called amateurs.

The atmosphere, the game, the ending, the aftermath on the pitch, it just had it all and more and all assisted brilliantly by a top-class refereeing performance from Sean Stack, who stayed calm whilst all around were losing their heads.

Now we move on. What’s on the line for Cork remains the same – a must-win game or else they are done. Same applies to Tipp. We have knockout hurling in Thurles and Ennis in May, a throwback to the nineties.

After these games are done in Munster and Leinster two things will happen. One group will start planning what they are going to do before the club championship starts: USA, Southeast Asia or Ballybunion maybe and the other group will believe that they have arrived and that their summer is only getting going now and the buzz in training will be savage.

Who that will be is, as always, very tough to call in both provinces.

We’ll start off in Ennis where Clare welcome Waterford. I think the Davy Factor has become less and less over the past few years and the focus genuinely for Clare will be just beating Waterford.

Cusack Park is "home" in name for Clare but not in terms of taking advantage of it.