Reason Galway Kilkenny replay is in Semple Stadium is comical

Sure couldn't Michael Buble have stood in to ref it?

Galway and Kilkenny couldn't be separated in their Leinster final on Sunday afternoon and they'll do battle again for the Bob O'Keeffe Cup next weekend. On the back of a bruising Round-Robin campaign, a replay will have been the last thing either Galway or Kilkenny wanted in a week's time. But with all provincial deciders going to another day rather than a replay in the case of a stalemate, the Tribesmen and the Cats are heading for Semple Stadium to settle this Leinster championship. The reason the game won't take place in GAA HQ again is because Canadien singer Michael Buble is headlining in the Drumcondra grounds next Saturday. It's far from Michael Buble the men of Kilkenny and Galway were raised and they're headed for Thurles now. The Bublé lad will surely be sickened to miss out on the feast of hurling. Because while Kilkenny and Galway didn't contain the free-flowing hurling we've become accustomed to in recent times, what it had in abundance was heart, courage and intensity. It really was kill or be killed out there in Croke Park on Sunday with both sides suffocating their opposition numbers. Kilkenny's Paddy Deegan summed up the game best with his iron man like reaction to a belt from Conor Cooney, but the courage shown by Padraig Walsh and Padraig Mannion on the opposite side showed why these two remain the most feared teams in the country.