IT’S BEEN a sobering 12 months since last year’s GAA All-Ireland hurling championships got underway in what was apparently a changed landscape. There were new defending champions for the first time in four years and the excitement of a bona fide breakthrough team, Dublin, having won a first national title in 72 years.
By extension that was to give hope to all other aspiring counties that if you worked hard enough at development and appointed the right management hurling’s glass ceiling could actually be broken.
This brave new world didn’t quite unfold. Tipperary had looked certain to kick on after the thrilling All-Ireland win in 2010 and the awesome display of their under-21s a week later. Instead they looked more drained and uncertain after what turned out to be their one-in-a-row than Kilkenny had looked after winning four.
Kilkenny on the other hand had been unusually rancorous and out of sorts when losing the league final against Dublin but the return of Henry Shefflin’s formidable presence settled the side and the orchestration was sufficient to bounce back just like Cork in the 1940s and follow up the failure to win five successive All-Irelands with a fifth in six years.
More ominously for their competitors, the All-Ireland champions reached an eighth league final in 10 years this spring and handed Cork an intimidating reality check in respect of life at the top.
It has been pointed out that none of the counties who have enjoyed big (eight points plus) wins in league finals during the past 50 years have gone on to add the All-Ireland but realistically you’d want more than that stat for protection when taking the field against Brian Cody’s team.
Their league victory was achieved despite an injury list that would have crippled any other county. It showcased the difficulties inherent in catching Kilkenny.
A number of influential players may be pushing on and there are expected to be issues when Shefflin in particular hangs up his sticks – comparable to the England rugby team post-Martin Johnson – but the county isn’t like their most obvious reference point, Mick O’Dwyer’s Kerry team of the 1970s and ’80s – the other cohort to have won eight All-Irelands in 12 years.
During their supremacy at senior level, Kilkenny have also been a dominant force at under-age and the ability to produce quality young players and – crucially – integrate them into the starry collective gives real encouragement that success can be self perpetuating for the mid-term future at least.
Last year for instance, Paul Murphy was introduced at corner back and went on to win an All Star. This year Richie Doyle and Cillian Buckley have impressed during the league and may well get chances this summer.
The leadership qualities that define great players aren’t always immediately apparent but players can develop into the role.
Current Hurler of the Year Michael Fennelly is an example of a player who paid his dues as a panellist before becoming a vital part of the first team and one whose injury is causing such concern in the camp.
Kilkenny may not be quite as good as they looked in the league final just as Cork won’t be as directionless but chances are that Tipperary won’t be as mediocre as they looked at various stages and especially in the opening fixture in Nowlan Park.
Lar Corbett’s return from self-imposed exile is important not for the immediate impact he’ll have on performance but for the sense of purpose his reappearance bestows on the rest of the summer.
Tipp have a daunting trip to Cork if they satisfy expectations tomorrow against Limerick. That journey – historically fruitless for 85 years up to 2008 – proved again beyond them two years ago when Cork weren’t as good as they are now under the baton of Jimmy Barry-Murphy.
The Munster championship has declined in recent years, a natural consequence of its disconnection from the All-Ireland. Only once in 10 seasons (allowing for Tipp and Cork victories through the qualifiers in 2010 and ’04) have the Munster champions lifted the MacCarthy Cup and that was seven years ago.
That indicates a shortage of powerful challengers, capable of the type of all-conquering consistency that Kilkenny routinely bring to bear on campaigns as the only county in football or hurling during the qualifier era to have recorded multiple successes without needing to resort to the outside track for any of those All-Irelands.
The champions are of course facilitated by a province where realistic contenders have been thin on the ground – to the extent of one championship defeat in 14 years – and neither the recent re-emergence of Dublin at senior level nor the relocation of Galway in Leinster have done much to alter that reality.
There is a sense that Dublin have to make a significant championship statement this year. Maybe that’s unfair on Anthony Daly’s side, which complemented league success last year by reaching an All-Ireland semi-final for the first time in generations. But the scale of the defeat by Kilkenny in the provincial final exposed the county’s claims as an elite force.
The likely semi-final against the champions in Portlaoise in a month’s time does however represent a better chance of success for Dublin than a provincial final in Croke Park with all of its baggage.
The county’s most significant championship breakthroughs have all come at venues other than Jones’s Road: the win over Wexford in 2009 at Nowlan Park, last year’s defeat of Galway in Tullamore and the subsequent first All-Ireland quarter-final victory, against Limerick in Thurles.
Elsewhere it’s impossible to see Waterford managing to sustain their top-four status but that’s been said before and whereas both Galway and Cork have exciting talents they also have sensible managers who know that they’re at the beginning of a journey rather than in sight of the destination.
