Layer by layer, the summer reveals itself in stories old and new. Four teams left in the football All-Ireland, the path to Sam Maguire set now. On one side of the draw, Kerry and Dublin, storied and distinguished, the game’s premier face-off down through all the generations. On the other, Louth and Mayo, who’ve only ever met twice in 139 years of championship.The quarter-final weekend served its usual mix of drama and delirium, melancholy and sourness. Across the four games, the biggest margin was the five points Mayo had over Cork on Saturday. Both games on Sunday saw the lead change in the final five minutes. The refereeing had its say across the weekend too, from questionable calls against Tyrone in their defeat to Kerry to a highly debatable red card for Louth against Monaghan. Some teams endured, others not so much.Biggest winners? Louth, by furlongs. You’re not supposed to survive a red card in the new game. If you are, you’re surely not supposed to survive it for 65 minutes. And if by some miracle you’re going to find a way to do it, it definitely, categorically is not supposed to happen when you’ve waited 69 years to reach an All-Ireland semi-final.Yet Gavin Devlin’s side came through against Monaghan, swallowing Seán Callaghan’s fifth-minute sending-off without a fuss and cantering to a 0-27 to 2-18 victory over Monaghan. That Callaghan should probably been at worst black carded for his body check of Oisin McGorman didn’t seem to unsettle Louth – they shrugged it off and won the rest of the game by six points with 14 men.“You don’t know how long it’s going to take to go up the mountain,” Devlin said afterwards. “You don’t know whether we have already got to the peak this season or whether there is just a wee bit more in us. We were ranked outsiders when it came down to the last eight, we’re now in the last four and we’ll take it for granted we’ll be ranked the last of the four again.“And that’s okay. We can live with that. It’s not the poor mouth or anything like that, it’s just reality. It’s where we come from ... there’s mammoth teams left and they’ll all want to play us. That’s okay. We’ll worry about ourselves.”Seán Hurson referee gives a red card to Seán Callaghan of Louth. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho For Monaghan, the loss of Rory Beggan with a hamstring injury proved too much to bear. Gabriel Bannigan gambled on handing a senior debut to their under-20 goalie Jamie Mooney but the longer the game went on, the more vital a cog in the Monaghan machine Beggan looked. Ultimately though, losing to 14 players will make for a desperately long winter.“Yeah, no question about,” Bannigan agreed. “I’m not making excuses for that. No question about that yet. Very disappointing. And the players are very disappointed because to know that they know that we didn’t bring the best version of ourselves here today. I don’t think we could say that about any other championship game.” And after all that, the semi-final bracket was filled out by the resurgent Dubs, who outlasted and outmanoeuvred Galway down the stretch to take a 1-25 to 1-21. A season that looked at various points to be a hopeless cause now comes down to what will presumably be a full house against Kerry in an All-Ireland semi-final. Nobody was calling that when they lost to Louth in front of 16,160 here just four weeks ago.They outscored Galway by 1-8 to 0-1 after the 55th minute here, helped along by a black card to Liam Silke with 10 minutes left on the clock. It was a brilliant display, full of bravery and intent, everything Ger Brennan could have asked for. It’s been a rip-roaring year for the Dublin manager, who not so long ago was questioning whether or not some of his older players had the hunger to keep chasing a day like this. He’s had his answer, and then some.“The season is so short,” he said afterwards. “I suppose I’m not one for hanging around. I try to be as honest and direct as I can. Do I get it correct all the time? I absolutely don’t. But I didn’t want to have a handy kind of a season and filter out older fellas as a kind of acknowledgment to the service they’ve given. “Because that would be a poor finish for them. So you try to kind of poke a few bears where you can and elicit a response and to be fair to all those lads they’ve kept at it.”Pádraic Joyce Galway manager and Damien Comer dejected after losing to Dublin. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho For Galway, another season fizzles out. They had the winning of this, having been six points up with 15 to go. But they couldn’t get hands on the ball when they went down to 14 and they felt they got the rougher end of the refereeing stick. But then, everybody feels that.“We have to own the defeat,” said Pádraic Joyce. “Which I do, and the players will do. A lot of stuff in the game didn’t go right for us. We didn’t get our hands on enough ball from kickouts, everyone knows that. But we had chances as well.”Chances, chances. At this time of year, either you take them and move on or you spend days and weeks and months grinding your teeth at the waste of them. One of Louth or Mayo will be in an All-Ireland final. One of Dublin or Kerry will meet them there.If this dizzying, electrifying championship is ever going to clarify itself, it only has three games to do so.