What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a Munster? It is. And a Leinster too.
The hurling championship is back and it’s shaping to be a novel one.
For the first time in what feels like forever, Limerick are not the favourites. Though that honour/curse hasn’t shifted to champions Clare but the beaten finalists Cork, who stopped the five-in-a-row bid at the penultimate stage.
Those three provincial rivals were trapped in a hurling version of rock, paper, scissors over the course of last year’s championship: Limerick beat Clare twice, Clare beat Cork twice, and Cork beat Limerick twice. An intensity triangle if you will.
Corkness levels are off the charts after a goal-laden league campaign that secured a first national trophy in 20 years. But the cup the Rebel hordes really want is Liam MacCarthy, named after a London-born son of a Corkman.
Pat Ryan’s side certainly look well equipped to end the county’s longest All-Ireland drought. Their abundance of forward talent is best illustrated in the bench against Clare tomorrow; Diarmuid Healy, Robbie O’Flynn, Declan Dalton and Shane Kingston would start for most counties.
The full-back line is perhaps where the greatest questions hover though and they will be tested by a Banner side somewhat written off after a poor league campaign, which ended in relegation, and the loss of Hurler of the Year Shane O’Donnell.
But the league is as reliable a forecaster as an underground squirrel stuck in a loop and the star forward is the only player missing from the Clare XV who started that exhilarating extra-time decider last July.
Brian Lohan might make easy motivation of them being unfancied in the quest for the only trophy Clare didn’t win last year: the Mick Mackey Cup. Especially against a team they haven’t lost to in championship since 2021.
Season-ending surgery is also not what it used to be, given O’Donnell is now in the frame to return as early as next month and Nickie Quaid is starting against Tipperary, five months after rupturing his cruciate.
The goalkeeper’s shock availability is a huge boost to Limerick, given his regular propensity for stopping what look like certain goals. The 36-year-old (3) and Kilkenny’s Eoin Murphy (2) have monopolised the All-Star goalkeeper’s jersey over the last five seasons, for good reason.
Despite a historic sixth Munster title last year, the Green Machine has been rebuilt following the failure of the drive for five.
Injuries and (few) retirements aside, John Kiely had more or less kept faith with the same players that ended the 43-year wait for Liam in 2018 and won four in a row from 2020-23. The bulk of those players came from the Under-21 winning teams of 2015 and ’17 but Colin Coughlan, Cathal O’Neill, Shane O’Brien and Adam English are all starters now while Barry Murphy has been remoulded as a corner-back.
All-Star winners Sean Finn, Declan Hannon, Tom Morrissey, Peter Casey and Seamus Flanagan are all benched or absent for the opening weekend, which is a dramatic departure in relative terms. Whether that signals a rejuvenating infusion of competition or the first dimming of the golden generation’s light remains to be seen.
Tipperary are an unknown quantity. They were flying in Liam Cahill’s first year (2023) until losing to already-eliminated Waterford when a win would have put them in the Munster final. Last season, they limped to a solitary point from four games.
This time around, Cahill has put faith in younger talent like Darragh McCarthy (taking the frees at 19) and Sam O’Farrell who both played for the U20s midweek. Robert Doyle and Joe Caesar have also nailed down starting spots. However, there are still plenty of survivors from the All-Ireland winning class of 2019: Barry Hogan, Michael Breen, Ronan Maher, Jake Morris, John McGrath and Jason Forde all start this weekend. There’s even one from 2010 in reserve: 34-year-old Noel McGrath.
The league final might have been a bit of a reality check and, with trips to Cork and Clare to follow, the Premier really need something from their first game to contend, which is a big ask. But if they got it, then a knock-out place could be possible.
Waterford would have qualified at Cork’s expense but for conceding a last-gasp equaliser to Tipp last year and new manager Peter Queally will be happy that they have attracted little attention while easing back into Division 1A, an early defeat to Carlow and second-half slide against Offaly (following a week away training) aside.
Key men like Stephen Bennett, Tadhg de Burca, Jamie Barron and Dessie Hutchinson are all fit, and though Calum Lyons (in Australia) is a loss, Mark Fitzgerald has emerged as a top-quality scoring wing-back. If the returning Austin Gleeson has recovered from a hamstring injury, they will fancy springing another surprise or two.
Leinster is, again, the poor relation. Though not the fans, who have to pay €10 less for stand tickets than their Munster counterparts (€35).
Since Kilkenny beat Galway in the 2015 All-Ireland final replay, the Tribesmen have been the only team from the province to win the title. They contested two of the subsequent nine finals and Kilkenny three. Of the other Leinster counties, only Wexford (once, in 2019) even reached the last four.
It would be a huge achievement for 2017 winning manager Micheál Donoghue to make Galway serious contenders again in his first season back in charge. But he’ll be intent on securing qualification for the knock-out stages at least.
A change of goalkeeper – Darach Fahy for Eanna Murphy – are among the subtle changes to have emerged from a more fruitful than anticipated league campaign.
If you had told Kilkenny fans ten years ago that they would be facing a record drought from then on they would have been wondering if you had over-indulged on the red ale. But that is what it will be unless the Cats prevail this summer.
They are the undisputed top dogs in Leinster (going for six in a row) but that doesn’t seem to have helped in getting over the line on the bigger stage. A closely fought All-Ireland final defeat to Limerick in 2022, Brian Cody’s last game, was followed by a comprehensive one (in the last half hour at least) in ’23 and an uncharacteristic second-half collapse to Clare in last year’s semi.
Martin Keoghan was the top scorer from play in the league but it still feels like Derek Lyng’s men are more reliant on 37-year-old TJ Reid than Cork are on the similarly vintage Patrick Horgan. His absence for the Galway clash this weekend will be a good chance for the younger heads to prove they can win without him.
The internal competition in Leinster is intense at least and often throws up a surprise, like Dublin getting to the final last year and Wexford edging out Galway for third. Those two will meet in a round-two battle that could again prove pivotal for a knockout spot.
Keith Rossiter is still missing some key men but Dublin will hope they can harness some inspiration from Na Fianna’s All-Ireland club win, especially as the man who masterminded that, Niall Ó Ceallacháin, has succeeded Donoghue in the hot seat.
Incidentally, Dublin hurling fans will have to pay to watch three of their championship games on GAA+, which you may not have realised as the political posturing around Cork last year was not replicated.
Offaly are on the up, spearheaded by underage success, though a top-three finish might be a bit much to ask in their first season back at the top table since 2018. And Antrim have yet to witness the Davy bounce but what better place for it to start than championship?
Referees are more likely to ignore the rules than during the league; don’t expect too many red cards for high tackles this weekend. And the format is still unnecessarily frantic – please ditch the preliminary quarter-finals that only serve to tire the third-place provincial finishers. But at least every game means something, unlike the box-ticking exercises that are the majority of the provincial football competitions.
Cork and Limerick look slightly ahead of the pack but 13 weeks weeks of skill, drama and emotion await.
