All-Ireland Club football championships:The weekend's All-Ireland football semi-finals are a record-breaking assembly of clubs for this stage of the championship.
For the first time in either football or hurling all four semi-finalists are former champions and between them have a record aggregate title haul for the penultimate round.
Cork's Nemo Rangers top the roll of honour with seven titles, Crossmaglen are next with four and Ballina and Dublin champions St Vincent's have one each for a four-club total of 13 - or over 40 per cent of the All-Irelands won since the championship was officially established in 1971.
The clubs' success rates in All-Ireland semi-finals are equally striking. Ballina and St Vincent's have 100 per cent records at this stage, having won two out of two and three out of three respectively.
Nemo and Cross have similarly formidable records in semi-finals, both with around an 80 per cent return. The Armagh champions' only defeat in five outings was three years ago against Portlaoise whereas Nemo have lost out only three times in 13 seasons of contesting the final four.
One of those defeats was against St Vincent's in 1976 (the other two came in semi-finals with Ulster opposition, Burren (Down) in 1988 and St Gall's (Antrim) who surprised the Cork giants two years ago.
The only other meetings between Sunday's teams were the 1999 All-Ireland final when Crossmaglen slipped past Ballina in the last few minutes and the 1973 final when Nemo beat Vincent's after a replay.
Although Crossmolina just beat Ballina to the distinction of being Mayo's first winners the other three semi-finalists were all pioneers for their counties in the championship. St Vincent's weren't the first Dublin champions to win, as that accomplishment belongs to UCD, but the club that was central to the emergence of a native Dublin county team over 50 years ago was the first to reach the final, in 1973.
That was the year that Nemo Rangers started the ball rolling on their domination of the championship, which has seen them win titles in every decade of the All-Ireland's existence. It also led the way for Cork, who with 11 titles have won more than any other county.
Crossmaglen became Armagh's first winners in 1997 and started a dominant run unequalled in the football championship. The club went on to win three All-Irelands in four years before returning last year for a fourth.
The club also reflects a trend detectable in Nemo's and Vincent's histories - that of underpinning a breakthrough at intercounty level. Former Cork captain, coach and manager Billy Morgan has been the most famous face of Cork football over the years and throughout has been closely associated with Nemo, captaining the club to a first All-Ireland in 1973 and winning another medal six years later.
That first success was followed within months by All-Ireland intercounty success with Cork in the county's first title success for 28 years. Overall there were four members of the Nemo team in action the following September. Then when Morgan led the county to their first back-to-back All-Ireland football sequence in 1989-1990, there were also four players from the Nemo side that had captured the club title in March 1989.
That sort of influence is another aspect the club has in common with Crossmaglen and St Vincent's, both of whom also produced their respective counties' most successful managers.
Kevin Heffernan followed up his club's All-Ireland success in March 1976 (current club coach Mickey Whelan was player-manager that season) by taking Dublin to the Sam Maguire by beating Kerry in the final, the first time the county had managed that in over 50 years. Five Vincent's players started that final and a sixth, Fran Ryder, came in as a replacement.
Similarly Joe Kernan in Crossmaglen managed the successful teams of 1997, 1999 and 2000 before going on to take the county to its first All-Ireland in 2002 with a side featuring four of his club's players.
Maybe the destiny of this year's club championship will provide a guide to which of the counties is most likely to maintain that challenge in the months ahead.
