Politics and sport rarely mix and it's fair to say the country is still shook after Micheál Martin's phone call to the GAA President encouraging him to reverse Darragh Fitzgibbon's controversial red card and have the hurling semi-final replayed.

This was shortly followed by a call from Martin to the CEO of Irish Rail to have all tickets booked in advance on the Cork Dublin train for the final reinstated.

"Let the hype start again" said Martin, as he released ninety nine red balloons over the Dáil to the sound of After All by the Franks. And it was this point that I woke up.

Martin hadn't done a Donald Trump and I had to content myself with the cold hard reality of living in a functioning democracy.

It was a long, hard day on the Hogan Stand last weekend.

With huge Cork crowds around Fairview, it was all set to be one of those magical days in the capital, where I walk out the door in the summer sun with the red jersey on, to join my friends for a few drinks in Clonliffe House before the short walk to Croker.

But Galway were having none of it. My neighbour is a Galway man and had been playing them down all week.

A very young team, he said. Still developing. "We'll hardly have enough for Cork," he offered

I guarantee you his fingers were crossed behind his back. I should have been getting worried then of course.

There's a pattern here: Tipperary coming out of nowhere to take us last year.

The same with Clare the year before. Cork will never have that luxury it seems - we rarely get to be underdogs - and we still haven't found a way to manage that dynamic.

The second half played out like a nightmare in Croker, a recurring one at this stage.

I know it's only a game, but nobody likes to see great young fellas freeze on the big occasion.

Ben O' Connor has some job on his hands turning all that hurt into gold.

Fachtna, who suffered the whole sorry debacle beside me in Croke Park, offered a theory after the second semi-final on Sunday.

He has long compared Limerick to the Borg from Star Trek - resistance being futile and assimilation the only option.

And they were in that mood again against Clare on Sunday with an awesome comeback display.

Over a pint on Sunday evening, Fachtna was wondering if the players themselves are being smelted out of alumina by John Kiely down in Aughinish.

A controversial take, for sure, but I considered it on its own merit.

Maybe they've developed some new sort of cyborg on the Shannon, I thought, a collaboration between the Russians and JP McManus designed to destroy Cork?

Is the anti-Cork conspiracy within the GAA now gone global? This would be huge if true. It was at that point we decided it was time to go home.

A Siberian supply chain

The largest alumina refinery in Europe was in the news this week of course.

It is owned, through a fine set of Russian nesting-doll parent companies, by Rusal, the outfit founded by the sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a man once described as Putin's favourite, a title which is absolutely tempting fate if you ask me.

This has become more and more awkward of late, and with President Zelenskiy in Dublin Castle as guest of honour pointing out that every tonne of raw material shipped to Russia ends up used against his own people…

Well, he didn't have to name the plant on the Shannon.

An Irish Times investigation reportedly traced Aughinish alumina by sea and across Siberia into the supply chain of Russian arms makers, which the company firmly denies.

When the figures looked desperate, eighty three per cent of the State's alumina heading to Russia in the first quarter, the company called it a clerical error and revised it to a half.

The Taoiseach says sanctioning the place would be self-defeating, that we would hurt ourselves more than Putin, and, I am quoting him, "we're not accepting threats from any quarter".

It's a conundrum of course. The place employs the guts of a thousand people and feeds spare power to a couple of hundred thousand homes.

A local write-up ran under the line that they are not making bullets in Aughinish - the place even has a butterfly reserve for God's sake!

With the spotlight on Ireland for the foreseeable it looks like a problem that isn't going to go away soon, much like the Limerick hurlers.

Bohs game a real shame

Meanwhile down in Mahon. Ringmahon Rangers, the Cork soccer club that reared Caoimhín Kelleher, had an FAI Cup tie against Bohemians on July 19th, the very day of the hurling final, and rather than clash with our inevitable coronation they handed Bohs a walkover and cleared the diary.

Then Galway took us to the cleaners.

By Saturday evening the club was online looking for a friendly, plans having changed, willing to travel on the nineteenth, and Anthony Daly was on the radio wondering might someone tell them they could have the Bohemians game back.

And I am in no position to sneer. I had my flight to France booked for the nineteenth for our family holiday, booked months back, telling myself it was a good deal.

I know now what it really was, some Cork corner of me quietly declining to get its hopes up.

Deep down, I must have known. But then the minor footballers go out and win the whole All-Ireland minor title, hauling themselves back from the dead to beat Tyrone, and somewhere deep down, you just start to dream of 2027…