We were setting up goals on the back pitch on Thursday around teatime, the heat still lingering in the late evening sun. The grass was soft and the ground was hard, as if June had finally stood up for itself after such a rainy May. The under-11s tumbled in, all chat and blather and sun cream.Summer is here, gaudy and decadent, free gratis and for nothing. We got talking about the games this weekend and the excitement around the slate of games. “Fair play to the GAA,” said one of the other dads. “I don’t know if they fixed the draw but if they did, at least they fixed it right.”(This would usually be the part where we put in a disclaimer designed to keep us out of the libel courts but pooh to that, I say. Libel depends on it being proven that you’ve lowered someone’s reputation in the eyes of right-thinking people – but what right-thinking people would have a problem with a little light GAA gerrymandering if it produced a draw like this? Their reputation would be through the roof!)Okay, okay – for the avoidance of doubt and penury, there is no suggestion that the GAA fixed the draw. We are all just this lucky. Armagh’s orange army mobilising for Killarney. Donegal’s hungry hordes descending on Dublin. Mayo and Meath trying to turn a middling year into a good one. Westmeath and Monaghan keeping cardiac surgeons in fancy cars for a solid two months now.We have before us comfortably the best list of matchups there has ever been at the last-12 stage of an All-Ireland championship. This is not as macho-nerd a claim as it might appear. Before 2001, there was no such thing as the last-12. In the qualifier era, provincial champions got a bye into the last eight, meaning this stage by definition never had the best teams playing in it.Even in the past couple of seasons, during the brief time of the preliminary quarter-finals, this round was mostly teams playing out the string. You had the occasional contender steadying things after a speed bump but the majority of the counties were also-rans, hanging in there for a trip to Croke Park before clearing the stage for the big boys.Westmeath’s Ronan Wallace scores his team's opening goal against Galway. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho Not this year. Tyrone, Galway, Louth and Cork are straight through to the quarter-finals and all but three of them are double-figure prices to win the All-Ireland. Most people presume the 2026 champions are playing somewhere this weekend. Everyone thinks they have a chance of at least a semi-final from here.As ever, calling it an open championship is a euphemism, a bit of a soft-soap to all concerned. What you’re really saying is that everyone is a little bit damaged, that the snag list in every camp keeps growing, that managers across the country are frazzled and careworn, staring at team-sheets that somehow feel thinner than they have all year at exactly the wrong time. Annoying for them, thrilling for the rest of us.In Killarney, one team is going to trudge home on Saturday night with the earliest end to their summer since the mid-1990s. Armagh haven’t been out of the championship in mid-June since losing to Tyrone in 1997. In Kerry, you have to go back to a defeat to Cork on June 20th, 1993 for the last time they were done before the schools finished up. The stakes are high as the reeks in the distance.In Croke Park, Dublin and Donegal arrive in various states of undress. All-Ireland champions and runners-up in two of the past three seasons yet they’ve both been beaten twice already this summer, defeats handed down by teams from Division Two and Division Three. Both with old soldiers hanging in there for one last push, both with headline-grabbing managers who’ve been through the disciplinary wars in recent months. A win here for either of them would change a lot.In Castlebar, it’s one of those games that feels like a free shot before the ball is thrown in and yet it will eat at the losers for months afterwards. Meath haven’t hit the heights of last year but will see nothing to fear on their travels. It’s not hard to understand why – Mayo always give you a chance.Monaghan's Stephen Mooney celebrates his goal against Roscommon. Photograph: Tom O’Hanlon/Inpho Last week, Andy Moran’s added Tyrone to a list that includes Galway, Dublin, Derry and Donegal – all teams against whom they’ve coughed up a winning position in the dying minutes since 2024. If Mayo go out here, it will be a third championship in a row that featured no game in Croke Park. You have to go back to the early 1980s for the last time that happened.Finally, in Clones, the two biggest showers of drama queens in the whole competition get it on. Six games in the 2026 championship have gone to extra-time – five of them have involved either Westmeath or Monaghan. These are teams who refuse to die.Mark McHugh’s side have been underdogs in every game since the Leinster quarter-final, yet only Galway have had their number. Monaghan lost every game in an injury-ruined league but have gradually Humpty-Dumptied themselves together again and rinsed the Connacht champions last time out.High summer and a brilliant championship thrums away, with everyone flawed and everyone hopeful. The days get shorter from here. No better way to waste them.