The GAA fetishises winter. It’s a safer bet, let’s face it. Winter is a given, and summer has an inconsistent attendance record. We are told time and time again that winter is when things are won, far from the bright lights, and so there’s a whole language, visual and spoken, around training in January in fog and sleet and snow.That is the crucible in which winning teams are forged. Championships might nominally be played on hard ground with a dry ball, but teams have probably won All-Irelands having never played on a dry day all year (a pound-shop Joycean GAA question if ever there was one.)We’re getting a summer this year, though. We have all doubtless woken up on mornings over the last week, taken our breakfast outside and luxuriated in the fine weather as if this is perfectly normal. This is what summer has always been in Ireland, we tell ourselves, and the images of rain and cold, 15 degrees in July, wrapped up on a beach in Achill on your holidays ... that is a figment of our imagination, not the eternal sunshine we now blithely expect to wake up to.This delusion is a happy one. And for the last two weekends, as 300,000 people attended four All-Ireland semi-finals in Croke Park, it might have been very easy to believe that this is the natural order of things. But of course it’s not.Louth and Mayo had its own special energy last Saturday evening. They hadn’t met in the championship since the 1950 All-Ireland final, and they sold out Croke Park 10 days in advance, a sign of the audacity of their hope.Kobe McDonald and Jordan Flynn of Mayo celebrate a score against Louth in the All-Ireland SFC semi-final at Croke Park on Saturday. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho Mayo, the great survivors, are back in another All-Ireland final, and their tyro Kobe McDonald will leave for Australia an All Star, the Young Footballer of the Year, and possibly an All-Ireland champion. He’s not going to turn 19 until December, and as he tearfully embraced his mum and his dad in the lower Hogan after the game, he finally, briefly, looked his age. Before that we saw Wicklow winning their first Tailteann Cup, having brought 12,000 supporters of their own. The noise they made as they roared back from 13 points down to win, and the emotion of Dean Healy’s captain’s speech – where he beseeched young Wicklow fans, male and female, to have hope – was a highlight reel all of its own.[ Mayo’s changing of the guard reaps rewards: Five things we learned from the GAA weekendOpens in new window ]On Sunday afternoon, as I waited for the 73 to take me all the way to Ballybough, I met an old team-mate of mine with his dad at the bus stop, headed for the Hill as they’ve done together for the last 20 years.What they said about their chances was repeated again and again by Dublin fans – that they were upbeat about the chances of a good display, that it was probably a bridge too far, that Kerry on balance were the better team, but that they remained cautiously optimistic.After years of being the overdogs, this was not an unpleasant experience for Dublin fans. And that underdog spirit gave the atmosphere an extra frisson. Walking down Jones’ Road 45 minutes before throw-in, extra gates were open to deal with the crowd seeking entry to the Hogan Stand. Everything felt augural, on a knife-edge.A view of Hill 16 during the parade at the Dublin vs Kerry All-Ireland SFC semi-final on Sunday. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho The parade was an insane riot of noise and colour, as it became clear Kerry had travelled in near-unprecedented numbers. The smell of smoke and flares wafted across from the Hill and hit me as the teams broke. And then, before the anthem, we paused for a moment’s reflection for Michael Leddy, the head steward in Croke Park, who died last week. Jerry Grogan has been the voice of HQ for many, many years, but he’s a visible presence by the tunnel. His is not a disembodied voice. As that voice caught with emotion, everyone turned to where he always stands, and saw a fellow steward with his arm around him. It came to mind that Jerry’s was the voice that we had heard speak so simply and wisely in tribute two days after the death of Seamus Heaney, before another Kerry/Dublin All-Ireland semi-final 13 years ago. How many others among the crowd of 82,000 people were thinking of people they had lost at that moment?After the game, standing across the road from Gill’s pub, I met a Kerry woman attending her first-ever game in Croke Park and who seemed quite dazed by the whole experience. The evening stretched on, the sun continued to shine, and the thought occurred that I’d be back the following week, for an All-Ireland hurling final with my county involved.None of this is a free lunch. Temperatures of 30 degrees in Ireland aren’t natural, and there’s no escaping the man-made reasons why continental Europe is burning. Former Dublin footballer David Hickey stood in that heat for hours on Sunday afternoon at the corner of Russell Street and the North Circular holding a banner asking the GAA to end their sponsorship deal with Allianz.But when you go along to a thrilling sporting occasion in a magnificent stadium, and moments after the final whistle that stadium plays not Freed from Desire, or the Black Eyed bloody Peas, but a concertina solo (the incredible To War by Cormac Begley), you can only shake your head at the unique, beautiful insanity of it all. Life, death, and music in the sun. And the two biggest days still to come.