COUNTIES MUST TAKE HURLING LEAGUE A LOT MORE SERIOUSLY
IT CAN be put down to an accident of faith but last weekend’s postponed fixtures will cast hurling in an unflattering light at the end of this month. We don’t know the details, yet, but we do know that the hurling and football League finals will take place on the same weekend.
It should never have come to this. The hurling League is unnecessarily protracted by the quarter-final rounds, which regularly produce two or three lop-sided games and do the competition no credit in the first instance.
That is argument is dead, given we will have a new format next year. Still, it does not explain why, when the hurling and football finals go head-to-head at the end of the month, there will only be one winner in the hype game.
Football is not my game but I know enough about it to predict this year’s final will be contested by Dublin and Kerry.
That fixture will probably attract a 60,000-plus attendance, especially in the aftermath of that match in Tralee last month, and it will be seen as the perfect appetiser for the summer.
Dublin are seeking to go where no football team have gone before, and there will be no county more hell-bent on stopping them than the Kingdom. So, welcome to the dress rehearsal.
What the hurling League would give for that kind of finale.
In a season where there is no relegation and form lines have been muddled at best, it is hard to see where we can come up with a final pairing that will hold the attention.
There is a slim chance, though, that we just might get one. One of the reasons why people are drooling at the possibility of a Dublin-Kerry final is that the former’s respect for the League is absolute. They are looking to reach their seventh consecutive spring final having won five of the previous six. When the best team in the land treat the secondary competition with the intent and purpose it does the first, then it elevates it as a competition. Others then begin to see it in a more positive light. Kerry, for example, did not take it seriously this decade until they finally cottoned on to how well the League has served Dublin and now they are on the brink of reaching their third final in four years. The hurling League was gifted that credibility at the turn of the last decade when Kilkenny — in essence pure Dublin in how they approached the spring — and Tipperary raged against each other. But that is in the past and we are the poorer for it. The thing is, though, it is not too late for the hurling League to get its edge back. It is far too premature to be comparing John Kiely’s Limerick to Brian Cody’s great Kilkenny team or Jim Gavin’s Dublin, but the earnest with which they have approached the League this season has been impressive. They are going all out to win this thing; that hunger was in evidence again last weekend. On a brutally cold day – in truth the game should not have been allowed to proceed – they kept going to the bitter end to secure the result that saw them top the table. That is the sort of determination and will to succeed that
It’s not too late to get an edge back
anyone would be proud of. Not enough possess it, however.
Limerick want to use the League to reaffirm their status as the number one team in the land.
The confidence rush they will get from that will make them all the harder to beat come the summer.
The rest could really do with copping on to that and puncturing that confidence with an early blow.
There are two teams out there in particular who are in no position to turn up their nose at the League: Cork and Wexford.
The latter have not had a national pot to admire since beating my Limerick team in the 1996 All-Ireland final and you have to go back to 1973 for the last time they won the League.
To be fair, I don’t doubt their mindset and while I would not always agree with how Davy Fitzgerald sets up his team, the one thing I have always liked about him is his ambition.
He is a born winner and while questions might remain as to whether he has the quality in his team to win at the highest level, the League provides him with a real opportunity to find out.
They play Kilkenny tomorrow in the knowledge that the mental death grip the latter once had on them has long been broken.
But they need to not only win tomorrow — which I am confident that they will given they have home advantage — but they must, at the very least, get to a League final. Put it like this, given that Galway would still be perceived to be a level above them, they probably have a better chance of winning the League than they do of winning Leinster.
And if they win the League, they will almost certainly have to take Limerick out, and if they manage that then there is noth- ing in Leinster, including Galway, who they will fear.
Meanwhile, Cork — one of the game’s great forces — have not won the League in 21 years and while they will tell you that they are all about the Championship, they have not calimed an All-Ireland title since beating Galway in the 2005 final.
Their problem is not quality, something I expect them to bring home with some force to Tipperary tomorrow.
These two old rivals are on different pathways now, Cork have been re-energised with new talent, while Tipperary have simply developed that level of talent.
Put simply, while Tipperary have blooded players and given them extended game-time, they have not come near like unearthing a stellar talent like Darragh Fitzgibbon.
And in Cork, there is a lot more to come from where he came from.
The issue with Cork is mindset and you have almost got the feeling in the past that the competition was beneath them.
I am hoping John Meyler changes that because the evidence is clear that it has not worked.
And a final involving two from Limerick, Wexford or Cork might just be one that would hold its own in terms of competitive integrity as Dublin and Kerry in football.
The bar has been raised, let’s go clear it.