How the contenders are shaping up

KILLINAN END

Another National League past and you wonder where it leaves us. Definite stirrings from Galway which suggests improvement and whets the appetite for Kilkenny’s trip there in April. Still, a young team from the West will find the championship testing in many aspects but they must be happy with a Spring well spent. Kilkenny is a hard one to judge. Has much progress been made? Have they a replacement full-back decided upon? Will the return of Reid at full-forward inevitably cause a return to the long ball tactic? Who will stand between the posts? Tallis saved them from a fair beating last weekend but the argument from Kilkenny was that his puckouts were what gave him an advantage over Eoin Murphy. Are they up to scratch? Is Darragh Corcoran really the answer at number six, with Paddy Deegan alongside him, against a pacey forward line?

Kilkenny may need all their traditional doggedness as the year goes on. Their opening rounds away to Galway and at home to Wexford could be very interesting indeed. A reliable working assumption in recent years has been that Kilkenny were more or less guaranteed to be in an All-Ireland semi-final - and we mean by the direct route as Leinster champions. This has been helped by the decline in Galway and the sheer inconsistency of Wexford and Dublin.

Wexford seemed to bring it against Kilkenny in a manner they can achieve for no other opposition. Yet they suffer from the cold mathematical reality that no matter how important the Kilkenny match may seem it still counts for the same number of points as all other opposition. Slip-ups against teams they should be bettering has completely undermined this county.

Dublin on the other hand have done reasonably well against all opposition but seem to find new ways to lose the Kilkenny. Could this be the year when the Black and Amber is on the back foot after a couple of early games and maybe heading to Parnell Park in need of a result?

Offaly and Kildare had a difficult National League but will have learned much about levels of competitiveness which might prove useful in high summer. Classically they are the kind of opposition against which Wexford tend to labour. They also are the sort of opponents Kilkenny have routinely breezed through during the round robin. However, Carlow's feat of drawing with Kilkenny two years ago suggests that unforeseen twists and turns might lurk even for a team going for seven consecutive Leinster titles.

Tipp will be content enough with what the League brought. When they needed results, they were able to get them without undue fuss. The continuing commitment to developing new blood such as Cathal O'Reilly and Stefan Tobin should bear fruit at some stage down the road though, no less than Kilkenny, early slip-ups in the championship could make life very difficult. Liam Cahill will be quite content to let Limerick and Cork at it in the League Final just two weeks before their championship meeting in Cork. It will be fascinating to see how the League Final informs the subsequent championship meeting. What will be learned by the defeated team? What psychological edge if any will be gained by the winning team? Will it matter at all? You really would wonder if a team with Limerick’s age-profile in key areas needs a game like this ahead of a Championship that will be difficult anyway. They travel to Ennis as well as Cork in the round robin, a challenging itinerary for any team. Tipperary will hardly be a walk in the park for the Shannonsiders either, even in the TUS Gaelic Grounds. What odds a League Final performance for the ages from Limerick followed by an early exit from the championship? Just a thought.

Conventional wisdom has it that for a variety of reasons playing in the second tier of the National Hurling League is most undesirable. Limerick supporters will recall what seemed to be a lost decade in the second tier. Even when they got promoted, they weren’t because of changes in the League system. The lower division was Clare's fate this year but you sense that they are tipping along nicely without much stress and will enjoy a day out with effective home advantage against Dublin in their divisional final.

Munster’s remaining team, Waterford, will be unhappy with relegation but can look back on the campaign with greater nuance than their eventual finish position allows. They probably should have won in Nowlan Park, they beat Limerick and were not far off the mark against Tipperary either. Evidence is scant that they have it in them to, say, win three matches in Munster, but in a provincial championship where several teams are capable of beating each other they may not need three games. The League suggests that injuries and availability of players will matter in a Championship that will be as competitive as ever in the coming months. Outside of an occasional tattoo artist in Cork who preys on the harmless few would look ahead with bold prediction.