ANY GIVEN MONDAY

Shane McGrath on all the talking points from the GAA weekend

SNOW fell and the wind swirled and the temperature slumped back to a mid-winter reading.

And in the midst of all that, the first signs of summer were discernible. Hurling’s romantics imagine their game ideally played on good, flat land under an intense blue sky.

But on a Sunday beset by foul weather, there was a tang of Championship in the air, too.

Hurling can be meaningful in sleet as well as in sunlight.

It is less than eight weeks to the start of the Munster and Leinster Championships, and teams are starting to take their summer shape.

There is no relegation or promotion between the top two divisions in hurling this spring but the League has begun to feel meaningful nonetheless.

The premium attraction on the first weekend of the Championships will be in Cork when Tipperary come to town.

For much of the League, Liam Sheedy’s return to the team he transformed a decade ago has been about discovery and renovation.

There was little time for statements or signal victories. Sheedy had to gauge the standard within the group and then try and improve them while attempting to compete in matches.

All this was to be done in a climate of incessant expectation.

Words like transition and patience don’t get much use in the Tipperary hurling vernacular.

Sheedy knows that, but he must also have known there was talent enough to sustain a meaningful All-Ireland challenge when deciding to return.

On Saturday morning, one of the players central to his 2010 winning team declared in a national newspaper that the honeymoon was over for Sheedy.

Given that since their opening win against Clare at the end of January, Tipperary have lost to Limerick by seven points, and then to Wexford and Kilkenny by a point each, Sheedy probably didn’t need Shane McGrath to tell him real life had returned with a sobering clatter.

Beating Cork by 13 points in Páirc Uí Rinn will, then, have lightened the load on Sheedy.

And in the process, it pitched Cork back into uncertainty and doubt that had lifted following wins over Limerick and Clare.

John Meyler’s team had brought badly needed optimism to Cork as their footballers flatlined and the controversies over, first, the redevelopment costs of Páirc Uí Chaoimh and then the terrible state of the playing surface scarred their reputation.

Perhaps a few days in Spain revived Tipperary, but more convincing is a side starting to take the form Sheedy desires. James Barry at full-back, Padraic Maher in front of him, and the sweetand-sour partnership of Noel McGrath and Michael Breen at midfield gives the side a firm structure to support the forward line, whose talent has never been an issue.

This was a game that would have exposed a team whose fortitude for the fight was in any way lacking. Cork’s recent form had been the better of the two sides, but they were blown away.

And less than two months out from the Championship, that matters.