It’s here again, welcomed back with open arms. Eight long months have been put down, waiting, longing for the return of ‘The Championship’. In the intervening period there have been other side attractions, a bit of soccer, some rugby, maybe some golf. But none had the grip of the Championship.

The more you get of it the more you want. As a child, it was like a rite of passage. Your first big game, awe struck by the sheer size of the crowds, wondering where all these people came from, amazed at the intensity of the occasion.

It’s 1985, and you are on your way to your first ever Championship game – Kerry v Dublin in Croke Park. You don’t have a ticket, but that’s OK as Dad’s knee will suffice. Sitting in the Cusack Stand, upper deck, it is like a whole new world as you gaze at the green baize down below. You are hooked. Nervously you clutch your Kerry scarf, dropping it continuously, waiting for the teams to appear. You have been brought up in the church of Kerry football, worshipped and praised at the shrine of those great players. Kerry win, holding on by four points. Not a bad start.

Your next visit to HQ is the following year; the men from the North, Tyrone, bringing contrast and colour. Nervous beforehand, your mother asks you are you alright, you look pale as a ghost. Somehow, the next seventy minutes have become the most important of your life, you fear defeat to an unbearable extent. Tyrone, playing swashbuckling football, storm into a lead and have Kerry on the precipice. But your heroes come back playing sweet, beautiful football. You are happy and content, knowing that the world is as it should be. It will be the last you will see of this great team in Croke Park.

The first time you see your own county play is the 1986 Munster Hurling Final. In Killarney, standing on the terrace, you hear the Clare anthem, My Lovely Rose of Clare before throw-in and it feels good. The game is on, you are transfixed by the saffron and blue of your county’s jerseys darting across the pitch...yet you sense that the team in blood red is somehow different, better, more assured than your county. Clare lose, it’s a feeling you get used to as you progress through your youth.

The years roll on, and the summers become pockmarked by the Championship. The only year that you don’t go to a Championship game is 1990 as the country becomes transfixed by the World Cup. As the years go on, the importance, the history of the whole thing, becomes more apparent to you. 1995 was when it all came together.

Munster Hurling Final day. Thurles. Clare, having lost the previous two finals, are now in a position of do or die. Lose three in a row and we would be the perennial losers. We won. That day, that glorious, sun kissed, burn your face after two minutes sort of day, it all made sense. The history, tradition, love of place all came through in one gloriously emotional occasion.

Five minutes to go and Clare are well ahead, the promised land is in sight. On the terrace, with the other Banner faithful, an old man turns to you, and with moist eyes asks ‘how much is left?’ There is still an underlying belief among the people on that terrace that we will be caught, that the years of defeat, disappointment and disillusionment will come back and catch us on the line, throwing us back into our rightful place. Those last five minutes were charged with emotion. Years of defeats were washed away, all those who had soldiered in the jersey were remembered; it was the most perfect fusion of history, tradition and hope that De Scribe had ever witnessed. Grown men in tears walked the Semple sod. This was what it was all about.

2005, another season of hopes and expectations. There are more stories to be written, more tales of joy and disappointment. More young recruits will join, swept up in the history and tradition of what we know simply as ‘The Championship’. On and on it goes, generation after generation.

Long may it continue.