The Munster football championship has never been a beacon of ultra competitive action - yet has the light ever been so dim?
Should you wish to make a case for retaining the provincial set-up, you certainly wouldn't look to Munster - a place where the relevance of its championship is perennially dwindling.
The protagonists, more often than not, stick to the script. The Kerry/Cork monopoly on the Munster title goes all the way back to 1992, when Clare pulled off one of the shocks of the century, while the current Kerry monopoly goes as far back as 2012.
Besides pushing Kerry to a replay in the 2015 final, Cork - so often the best hope of competition for Kerry - have only come within a score of their rivals in a provincial final on one occasion - in 2013 as reigning champions.
Kerry's opponents this weekend, Clare, already appear to be in favour of scrapping the provincial slogs. Colm Collins has made no secret of his thoughts on the traditional competition, becoming one of the first critics of the competitions. "I think the provincials are dinosaurs," he said in 2016.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport last year, he backed up his feelings once again.
Imagine the excitement if you could have Dublin and Kerry, or Dublin and Tyrone in the same group, besides churning out the same old pairings.
The sky is not going to fall in if we get rid of the provincials.
I think the provincial councils are a really good way of administering the money and that kind of thing and could be left in position for that.
I think it’s a no-brainer, it has to happen. But it looks like it’s going to be a slow, slow process. I’m not holding my breath.
Either way the provincial championships are here to stay - for this year anyway - even if Clare's hard-earned win over Waterford suggested this Saturday's game will prove similar to every other one since 1992 - the last time Clare beat Kerry in the Munster championship.
Clare's one-point win over Waterford earlier this month perhaps proves the Déise are catching up with the pack, but it doesn't mean Kerry aren't increasing their distance ahead of everyone else.
Waterford's last win in the championship came in 2010; it still didn't prevent the decade of Kerry dominance that was to follow. And yet, only a single All-Ireland title was won by the Kingdom during that same time - in 2014. So the past decade has hardly constitutes a golden generation, which would at least explain the provincial dominance.
Cork, almost inevitably, provide Kerry with their stiffest competition, or threat - despite going nearly seven years without a provincial title. The side's relegation to Division 3 this spring lends itself to the worst case scenario in the province - more Kerry dominance. The current drought on Leeside is the longest provincial famine in nearly 30 years and it doesn't look like finishing anytime soon.
The doldrums in Cork give Limerick a glorious opportunity - a chance to make their first Munster final since 2010.
The Limerick manager told the Three Man Weave, the Balls.ie GAA podcast, that he was open to a tiered structure; at the launch of the Munster championship, however, he recognised the failures of the status quo.
It gives the lesser teams the opportunity to play on the big days. But I still think there’s a place for another way of going about it, realistically speaking.
A lot of time is put into playing inter-county now, and there’s an awful lot of talent in many counties not playing it because of the time and little reward involved.
So I think that’s something we’ll all have to look at and see what's the best way forward.
Tipperary found some joy in 2016, making it all the way to an All-Ireland semi-final, but they still fell victim to a 10-point defeat to Kerry in the Munster final. Essentially, Tipperary's run into August only papered over increasingly worrisome cracks.
The provincial championships as an anachronistic element of the GAA summer has become widely acknowledged. As for solutions: the head-scratching continues. It has left supporters, especially seasonal supporters, detached from the competition, waiting until the wheat has separated from the chaff - the latter becoming all but the men from the Kingdom recently.
And still, the show goes on.
Limerick travel to Páirc Uí Rinn to face Cork, Kerry arrive in Cusack Park to face Ennis - as both games clash with the Champions League final, the likelihood is these games will, once again, fade further into irrelevance.
What was it Einstein said about lunacy?
