The relative reclusiveness of current inter-county footballers was felt this week by newspapers in Kerry and Armagh. Deirdre Walsh in the Kerryman was most forthright about the problem of limited access to players and management in her piece headlined Brains as well as brawn in Kerry squad but why won't they talk to us? Walsh outlined the current trend of press nights by which time is formally set aside for the media to meet the squad. Unfortunately, as she outlined, what follows is often a hit-and-miss affair with players doing their best to sell dummies to the assembled media. Walsh's experience, which is quickly becoming the norm, included a player telling her that "I don't like talking to the press" (Noel Kennelly), and another declining to talk to her on the basis of a "superstitious thing" (Eamonn Fitzmaurice).

Joe McManus made a number of veiled references to a similar problem in the Armagh Observer. The county stage-managed their press night on an even more restrictive basis, wheeling out four players for a question and answer session. The prodigious McManus (who wrote the front-page lead and almost singlehandedly supplied the copy for a semi-final supplement) also wrote that Armagh were so keen to get away from it all that they undertook a training weekend in Glasgow, using Celtic's training ground and staying in an East Kilbride hotel that is also the temporary home of new Celtic manager Martin O'Neill.

In Galway, it was time for reflection on the hurling semi-final defeat. The Connacht Tribune's John McIntyre, rarely a man to mince his words, went straight for the jugular in his first paragraph. "Let's cut to the chase," he wrote. "Galway weren't good enough . . . and to make matters worse, their second-half submission in Sunday's All-Ireland hurling semi-final at Croke Park was both puzzling and disappointing. In one swoop, 12 months of painstaking progress has been virtually wiped out." McIntyre's analysis maintained this sharp level of criticism throughout, stating that "there is no All-Ireland in this Galway team", that "it was also disconcerting the manner in which heads dropped so quickly", and that "an eight-point defeat leaves no room to peddle hard luck stories". But after all that, he went on to say that the management team deserve a third year in charge.