Tipperary and Clare get thumbs up for Limerick colosseum

And then there were six.

Last weekend went as expected. Carlow put in a very good performance for 60 minutes and gave it everything against the Dubs while in Tullamore all sorts of records were broken, and for all the wrong reasons for the Faithful side.

I felt Tipp were coming with a performance of hurt from the Waterford loss and this game was done after 10 minutes. Offaly looked tired, the Joe McDonagh final defeat knocked the life out of them and they were a shadow of a team compared to that day in Croke Park.

In a way, it’s hard to blame them. I’m sure some lads took a well deserved little break after that game and maybe some began to focus on the club championship, which is fast approaching, but Tipp did what they had to do and in emphatic style. Were they tested? Not at all but they did what was needed and they will take the confidence from the victory and drive on now for Galway on Saturday in Limerick.

What happened at O'Connor Park adds buckets of fuel to the burning question: should the McDonagh finalists still be playing in these preliminary quarter finals?

Fourth place in Leinster and Munster could have been involved in these clashes against Offaly and Carlow

Fourth place in Leinster and Munster could have been involved in these clashes against Offaly and Carlow, this year that would be Cork and Wexford, and then let the winners of those games play Tipp or Dublin. So in your quarter finals you would have, for example's sake, Tipp v Wexford and Cork v Dublin. Neutral venues or a double header somewhere.

Ok, people will say more games than week on week for the fourth place teams, but if I went to Pat Ryan or Darragh Egan with this right now they’d bite the hand off ya for another shot at it. That’s my solution. Does