September Road: Were the long journeys worth it? Well, obviously, for Kerry supporters in particular they were. However, the loyal travelling support of both yesterday's finalists had the furthest to travel of all 31 teams during this season's senior football championship.

The distances, in miles and kilometres, listed below are the total return journeys for the entire championship (though we didn't count Mayo's trip to London or Roscommon's expedition to New York, for obvious reasons).

September Road took the home ground of each county as the starting point for each return journey - and so any senior football championship ties that a county played in its own home stadium during this year's championship would count for zero miles (which explains Leitrim and Monaghan not registering a single mile).

Incidentally, a Cork supporter from the city who drove to all of the county's 10 senior hurling and football championship ties this summer would have clocked up 2,156 miles (3,471km) for his/her troubles.

Perhaps, though, we should dock a few hundred miles as no Cork fan would surely have been mad enough to have driven up to Dublin on Saturday, August 5th, for the football quarter-final against Donegal, and driven home again, only to appear back in the capital the following day for the hurling semi-final clash with Waterford.

They're not that mad . . . are they?

Top Scorers

Senior Football Championship

Conor Mortimer (Mayo) 1-35 (38)

James Masters (Cork) 1-30 (33)

Matty Forde (Wexford) 1-25 (28)

Ross Munnelly (Laois) 2-22 (28)

Brian Kavanagh (Longford) 1-24 (27)

Paddy Bradley (Derry) 2-20 (26)

Bryan Sheehan (Kerry) 0-26 (26)

Conal Keaney (Dublin) 1-22 (25)

Tomás Quinn (Dublin) 3-14 (23)

Micheál Meehan (Galway) 1-20 (23)

Under-21 Hurling Championship

Darragh Egan (Tipperary) 3-23 (32)

James Fitzpatrick (Kilkenny) 0-24 (24)

TJ Reid (Kilkenny) 2-12 (18)

Mark Cummins (Kildare) 1-14 (17)

Damien Bergin (Laois) 1-14 (17)

Colin Delaney (Laois) 4-5 (17)

Quote of the 2006 senior football championship: "What's wrong with a few of them throwing swipes at each other? Sure that is what you want." - Kerry manager Jack O'Connor responds to rumours of discontent in the Kerry camp that had circulated before the All-Ireland quarter-final defeat of Armagh.

Really, officials in the GAA have to come up with more realistic attendance figures. The All-Ireland under-21 hurling final replay drew a massive crowd to Thurles at the weekend. In fact, throw-in had to be delayed for 10 minutes because of the queues at the turnstiles.

Between the Old and New stands at Semple Stadium there are approximately 36,000 seats, and both sides were very close to being fully occupied on Saturday. And there were also a few hundred supporters in the Killinan terrace.

The official attendance?

A hilarious 18,978.

In fact, when the figure was announced during the second half of the match, it drew sustained laughter from Kilkenny and Tipperary fans alike.