Help is at hand as hurling arrives like a soothing balm for usual football gripes

Here is a suggestion for a third-level student pursuing a master’s in a sport or behaviour-related subject. Log the number and variety of complaints associated with a GAA year, periodise them and soon the spikes will become clear.

The early season brings the conflict between college and county and the attached commentary, complete with pressures on young players and the toll put on them. There’ll be various shades of that.

Later in the season, as convention reports land, the cost of inter-county preparations will scream across the pages.

Football playing rules are the great variables. The furore over them can kick off at any time. That’s not period-sensitive. All it takes is a low-scoring game and a few passages of lateral play and we’re off.

But over the last decade or so, the spike that has climbed highest has been opprobrium over the provincial football championships and, more specifically, the Leinster Football Championship.

With the new calendar, the provincials have switched to April instead of May and into June. But, if anything, the mood around them is even darker.

Over the first two weekends of the championship, football has had the place all to itself. And with the greater exposure comes louder commentary.

It has precedent. In 2011, Donegal played Antrim in the preliminary round of the Ulster Championship in Ballybofey, winning by 1-10 to 1-7 in adverse weather conditions.

It was a poor game but also the only show in town that weekend and consequently got pilloried that night on The Sunday Game, failing the quality test. It was Jim McGuinness’s first championship game in charge of Donegal and he took a very dim view of no ‘man of the match’ presentation being broadcast (Donegal’s Ryan Bradley had been awarded it earlier in the day) that night because the panel had decided the game wasn’t worthy of it. The point is early-season games are always held up to the light and treated differently because, quite simply, there can be little else to talk about and get over-exposed to the heat of scrutiny. It has felt like that over the last two weekends.

But help is at hand. The cavalry is riding over the hill carrying sticks and wearing helmets. Even the weather is threatening to break free of the grip of rain, wind and cold to allow warm sunshine break through in Salthill, Wexford and Kilkenny on Saturday and Ennis and Waterford on Sunday.

What’s more, they are games of great consequence. If the provincial football championships feel more like a pause in the season – unless it’s Kildare or Down battling for Sam Maguire sta

tus – before the action ramps up, hurling’s safety net can only take so much downward force.

We can’t say for sure that Wexford and Dublin is effectively a contest for third place in Leinster, not with the way Wexford have extricated themselves from trouble with final-round wins over Kilkenny in successive years, both times at Dublin’s expense, after drawing and losing to Westmeath. But the winners in Chadwicks Wexford Park on Saturday are entitled to feel they’ll have taken a significant step to at least prolonging their championship involvement into June.

Waterford’s opening game in Munster at home to Cork already has a ‘must-win’ feel about it, given their round-robin history since its inception in 2018. Lose, and the fear is the spiral will continue.

But all eyes are inevitably drawn to Ennis, where Limerick set on their championship path and pursuit of a historic five-in-a-row.

The common consensus is that if Limerick are to be stopped in pursuit of five, they’ll have to be stopped in Munster. And if they’re to be stopped in Munster, the first wounds must come in Ennis. Win there and they’ll surely pick their way comfortably through the rest of their Munster campaign.

Lose, and they may well still pick their way through it. But in the aftermath of last year’s defeat to Clare in Limerick, they staggered, drawing with Tipperary next time out and just edging Cork in the Gaelic Grounds in the last game.

It was that close, making for one of the greatest-ever championship hurling days, with Waterford shocking Tipperary simultaneously as Wexford and Galway did their respective Houdini acts against Kilkenny and Dublin.

Unlike football, there is no slow burn, no peaking for later dates. It’s up and at it straight away.

It will have its complaints, of course. Once the biggest games start disappearing behind the paywall, GAAGO will get it. And there’ll be plenty of refereeing decisions chewed over.

But competition structures, timing, competitive balance and all the other ailments associated with the other side of the house fade largely with the onset of the hurling championship.

This year might be more stimulating than ever.