GAELIC GAMES: KEITH DUGGANbelieves this year's championship might be the most intriguing for many years, not least because of the mystery that shrouds Kilkenny

THIS SUNDAY the All-Ireland hurling championship will burst into life with a ferocity its football counterpart can rarely match. There can never be anything slow-burning or half-hearted about Tipperary versus Cork.

That derby features the promise of two teams tumbling into one another and into the vortex of a hurling championship in which just a handful of teams engage for four months in staccato bursts of speed and intensity.

At its best, the hurling championship makes its sister competition seem plodding and lacking in imagination.

The last two All-Ireland final between Tipperary and Kilkenny were anointed by the cognoscenti as two of the best in living memory.

And this year’s championship has the potential to be the most intriguing for many years, not least because of the mystery that suddenly shrouds Kilkenny – the uncertainty of whether they will be able to respond to the bold strides Tipperary have made over the last 12 months.

But if Kilkenny and Tipperary are the teams who will dominate much of the betting business and the predictions, it was the third team of hurling’s Trinity, Cork, that helped to define last year’s All-Ireland championship.

This year offers at least the possibility of novelty, with Dublin and Galway set to challenge the black and amber procession that the Leinster hurling championship has become in recent years. But the hurling championship needs a big year from Cork.

Think back to a year ago: Cork and Tipperary by the Lee and a classic rejection of general expectations by the men in red. Tipperary, stuttering in the league, were bumped from Munster by a 3-15 to 0-14 score-line.

“We felt that everything was on the line,” Cork goalkeeper Donal Óg Cusack said after that game. “I’m sure Tipperary have learned a lot from this defeat as well.”

And how!

It seemed like an innocuous remark but in retrospect, it was the most salient comment of the summer. It is easy to forget now just how pessimistic Tipperary hurling people were about the county’s prospects in the wake of that defeat.

“They are not out but they need to review their direction and what happened is bound to leave psychological scars,” Nicky English wrote in this newspaper.

Manager Liam Sheedy offered no excuses, maintaining he believed training had gone well. But Cork forced an early summer evaluation among the Tipperary management and squad of where they stood. They disappeared off the radar then for a full five weeks while Cork rolled on through Munster, putting an underwhelming Limerick side to the sword in the semi-final and then engaging in a terrific drawn and replayed Munster final against Waterford.

They were beaten after extra time in the replay on a wild and memorable Saturday night in Thurles but through the Munster championship, Cork once again served notice of the fiercely independent flame that made them easily the most controversial team of the last decade, a team that stood for their principles regardless of how their stance was perceived by the public at large.

When Tipperary re-emerged in the qualifying series, they briskly disposed of Wexford and Offaly before meeting Galway in that thrilling All-Ireland quarter-final, when they had the poise and nerve to win a brilliant game at the death.

Cork, meanwhile, made it to the other All-Ireland semi-final, where they met Kilkenny. If Tipperary’s prospects were not so dampened as doused after their meeting with Cork, the opposite happened after Kilkenny met them in that semi-final. The 3-22 to 0-19 performance seemed to reinforce all the old assumptions about Kilkenny. They were looking invincible again at precisely the right time of year.

One of the chief irritants of Brian Cody’s reign over Kilkenny lay in having to constantly downplay the often-voiced notion that Kilkenny were unbeatable, that they were out on their own. And yet the way they just brushed their old rivals aside seemed to confirm this. Cork had not been able to launch themselves with the same abandon and urgency as they had done against Tipperary in early summer and from the early stages of the game, they played second fiddle.

Waterford and Tipperary would meet in the other semi-final but the black and amber juggernaut looked as imperious as ever, rolling unassailably towards that five in a row.

“I thought they were awesome today,” admitted Dublin manager Anthony Daly after that semi-final.

“They are the greatest team – maybe there should be a prize to whoever doesn’t get to the All-Ireland final,” he joked. “You see what was missing and you see the guys that were able to come in. Who is going to match them next year, like? That is the thing you would wonder about?”

It seemed like a fair question that afternoon.

Few would imagine then that Daly would be celebrating a handsome National League final victory with Dublin just seven months later.

In retrospect, that Cork semi-final was a dangerous game for Kilkenny – a comfortable All-Ireland semi-final win. There was no question of Kilkenny falling into any sort of complacency afterwards. But equally, it was a game in which they could learn nothing about themselves or identify any new chink of weakness that they could work upon before Tipperary. And they had beaten Cork, one of the bluebloods

The only concern afterwards was the state of Henry Shefflin’s fitness after the Ballyhale man left the match on 22 minutes with a damaged knee. We know what happened next. The All-Ireland build-up centred around Shefflin’s availability and then, in the final, Tipperary, who managed a meagre 14 points against Cork on the opening day of the championship, came out and scored 4-17 against a team that was closing in on immortality.

The lead story of this year’s hurling championship revolves around Kilkenny’s bid to fight against the ravages of time as well as the Tipperary team who eclipsed them last year – and all the other ravenous counties who have been waiting, for ever so long, for the day when the Cats begin to weaken.

Somehow, the Cork hurlers have been cast among the support acts. The forecasts for Sunday are not good: a small crowd destined for Thurles and the footballers – for once – capturing the general imagination.

The heart and know-how is still evident through the old guard led by Donal Óg Cusack, but few believe they can live with the contenders on a consistent basis. The idea of Cork making up the numbers in the All-Ireland championship will hardly sit well with hurling people in the county. Last year was no vintage year and yet the Rebels still brought out the worst and the best in the teams that were there on the last Sunday. The championship will be richer this year if Cork can bring the bit of mischief to it.