National Hurling League Kilkenny v Galway: Seán Moranon why defeat for Galway tomorrow afternoon in Nowlan Park would carry with it the strong suggestion they're not progressing

The rivalry has been significant. It's 32 years since Galway were readmitted to hurling's top table, a status they earned by beating Cork to reach a first All-Ireland final in nearly 20 years. In the final they had their ears boxed by a great Kilkenny team and there was no great surprise at that. But Galway's time would come.

It did but the county still had to wait even longer to record their first championship win of the modern era over Kilkenny, the 1986 All-Ireland semi-final.

Tomorrow afternoon's story isn't tied up with the full range of the counties' modern history but it has more recent resonance.

In what has been to date Kilkenny's decade, Galway are the only county to have defeated them twice in the championship. In return, Brian Cody's team have won the remaining three of the five summer fixtures.

For the past three years the counties have met in championship, with the pendulum that meters their relationship swinging violently from side to side.

The savaging received by Galway in 2004 gave way a year later to revenge in a high-scoring shoot-out and last year to another Kilkenny blitz from which their opponents salvaged an unlikely and largely irrelevant second-half comeback that fell short less gapingly than had been feared.

In Pearse Stadium, Salthill, tomorrow afternoon they meet in the National League. On one level, we say it doesn't matter but on another maybe it does. Or more precisely it matters to Galway.

For a long time the NHL was a big deal for the county because of their lack of provincial competition. That fact shouldn't have altered greatly for all the perpetual revolution of the hurling championship's rapidly evolving format. But it has in the sense that success in spring and in summer is no longer inextricably linked in Galway minds.

Correspondingly, Kilkenny have throughout this decade pursued both trophies implacably and sustained disappointing seasons when the earlier pursuit wilted. Brian Cody's team need the points to be sure of making this year's play-offs.

Another significance in the match is that Galway are under new management. Ger Loughnane's relationship with the league is ambiguous. As a player on one of the best Clare sides of the last century he watched the accumulated silver of two league titles translate into championship dust.

As manager in Clare, he used the 1995 NHL to position his team and they lost the final - to Kilkenny - before going on to historic things later that year. Thereafter it was as if he was punishing the league for all its false promise, by refusing to chase it while his team were the game's dominant force and occasionally using it to produce displays that had they taken place on a race course would have left the stewards speechless.

Loughnane will know this is different. Back in '95 he said it had been imperative to beat Tipperary in the league in order to show the unexpected championship victory of the previous year hadn't been an isolated strike.

This weekend should Kilkenny lose, few will doubt them for the championship but the idea will remain viable that Galway under Loughnane might indeed be the right combination of steel and silk.

Image and self-image has had an important role in the past three years' dealings between the counties. Loughnane's predecessor, Conor Hayes, was in charge throughout that period. He remembers the fatal lapses that fed into the 2004 hammering.

"We won the league in May and took our foot off the pedal. A couple of things caught us. We beat Waterford in the league final and they weren't at their best but then Waterford hammered Clare a week later.

"At the back of our minds we were beginning to think, 'are we as good as that?' Expectations were high. We tried to hurl directly against Kilkenny, play 15 on 15. The next year we weren't doing that and the idea was to man mark instead. It worked but it worked against us as well and we conceded some soft scores.

"But we had an agenda after 2004. If we got there again the following year we wanted to prove that we were better than we looked. We never really upped the ante or got the players up to pace. We were playing league hurling in July. We remembered that in 2005."

The other factor in 2004 was the backlash. Until the counties' meeting in the All-Ireland qualifier that July, Galway had been the only blot on Kilkenny's record that decade, which had yielded three All-Irelands in four seasons and just one defeat - by Galway in 2001.

After that defeat Cody initiated radical reform of his team and absorbing the lessons of what had been a physical challenge, re-ordered priorities. It also meant that Galway were owed something. Exacerbating this already raw sensibility was the fact the team had also just sustained what to date remains their only defeat in Leinster this decade, the last-second thunderclap from Wexford's Mick Jacob.

When Galway reached the 2005 semi-final Hayes knew the old-fashioned stuff wouldn't do and the decision was to institute a rigid man-marking system.

It ultimately had the desired effect, as amongst other positionings, Ollie Canning played most of the match at full back and Derek Hardiman went to the corner but it also curiously had the effect of opening up the match, which produced a blizzard of scores.

In the absence of the injured Noel Hickey, rookie full back John Tennyson was taken for three goals by Niall Healy. A year later and Tennyson was in with a shout for the centre back All Star whereas Healy hasn't so far been near the achievement of that day.

In last July's quarter-final, Kilkenny endured a low-key start before opening up on their opponents.

"The thing about them," says Hayes, "is that when they dominate they score. Some teams will dominate you but you'll be thinking, 'we're doing well to be only three behind here'. Kilkenny though can go from being, say, 0-9 to 0-5 ahead to 2-9 to 0-5 ahead and you're struggling.

"Their ambition in possession is: how do I manufacture a goal? Look at Martin Comerford, it happened last summer. We were there or thereabouts for a while and then they were gone. All we did in the second half was put a gloss on it. I said after 2004 that if you were allowed call a time out, you'd have done it then. Just to say, 'this isn't what we should be doing'."

The beginning of April is no time to be exacting revenge for summer thrashings but that doesn't mean it lacks significance. Beating Kilkenny doesn't mean that Galway are ready to challenge for All-Irelands but losing would carry the strong suggestion - especially with the holders being as under-strength as they are - that they're not progressing.

And, as Hayes points out, no one ever alleges that any win against Kilkenny is counterfeit.

"Any game against Kilkenny is important. Brian Cody doesn't take his foot off the pedal. He doesn't do shadow boxing in the league."