Enda McEvoy: Offaly the good news story, but still no getting away from Limerick

Offaly, sweeping the streets only a few years ago yet now elevating themselves into a position to be a MacCarthy Cup and Division 1A outfit simultaneously for the first time since 2011.

Carlow beating Waterford, drawing with Offaly and approaching the closing round with a chance of promotion.

Down’s resurgence under Ronan Sheehan, one of the outstanding hurling men of this era or any other.

Donegal defeating Kerry. Perhaps the result of 2025 in either code. Unquestionably in with a respectable shout of ending the season thus.

There are always good news hurling stories at this time of year, if never anywhere near enough of them. Sometimes they require diligent tracking and a good compass. Not this spring. Just study the results and the tables.

None of which detracts from Sheedy’s argument about what we’ve witnessed in the top flight over the past two months. Then again, what else was to be expected? A deficit of blood and thunder will only ever be the case with a competition that concludes a fortnight before the big throw-in.

By its nature, its structure and above all its timing, Division 1A is an entity that can satisfy either the needs of the teams or the wishes of the spectators but not both. No possible blissful medium exists. If there’s any surprise it should be that the league generates as many mildly diverting matches as it does.

The heart of the matter is the scheduling. When Tipperary lifted the trophy in 2001 they had four weeks to twiddle the dials before their championship opener. When Cork won the All-Ireland two years earlier they’d finished their league campaign on April 18th and in order to fill the void till the Minster semi-final on June 13th hit the pre-championship challenge match circuit (remember that?).

This necessity brought in its turn a celebrated evening against Tipp in Páirc Uí Chaoimh where the hosts were so bad, and the visitors won so comprehensively, that Jimmy Barry-Murphy was left to ask himself what the hell he was doing here. You’ll recall how that particular one ended.

Talking of challenge matches, in his 1995 opus A History of Hurling Seamus J King allowed that the league, while naturally the child of a lesser deity than the championship, “has its own importance”. It afforded counties the opportunity to try out new players and despite the decreased intensity provided “a more reliable yardstick than challenge games by which to measure a player’s ability”.

In other words, up to the mid-1990s and for a few years afterwards the league was regarded not much more highly than challenge matches as a blooding ground. In the second half of that decade, indeed, it lagged well behind the Fitzgibbon Cup in terms of springtime competitiveness. Not until Nicky English in 2001 and Brian Cody thereafter demonstrated beyond doubt the benefits of respecting the league did it step into a vibrant new version of itself.

For all its failings it remains the hardiest of entities, impervious to criticism, adaptable to any terrain. Knockout phase complete with bells, whistles, quarter-finals and semi-finals? If you insist. Knockout phase with semi-finals but no quarter-finals? Grand. Final only, to be contested by the teams finishing first and second in the division? Whatever floats your boat.

It went into hibernation during the Emergency to return in 1946 and be won by, improbably, Clare. It changed shape during the pandemic, Limerick taking the honours in 2020 by defeating Clare in a Munster quarter-final that doubled as a league decider, Galway and Kilkenny sharing the title the following season, and emerged the other side. It trundles on.

Quick quizzy digression. Two counties have won the All Ireland but never the National League. They are..?* 

Old-time county board treasurers used to love the league. It was where the money was stashed, like the X on a lost pirate map. Give a treasurer a choice between league success and All-Ireland glory and he’d invariably opt for the former. Better still if the county departed the championship in the first round, thereby keeping costs low. Ching!

Between Cork in 1970 and Tipperary in 2001 the only teams to do the league/championship double were Kilkenny in 1982-83 and Galway in 1987. That was a lot of happy treasurers.

Every so often, moreover, the competition constituted the opening chapter of what became a fairytale. It was the spark in 1975 that lit Galway’s fire, one that continues to burn. Two years later it propelled the best outfit to leave the Banner since the 1950s into the public ken, an event that would in due course have unimaginable ramifications.

If there was no Clare team of 1977-78 would there have been a Clare team of 1995-97? At any rate there would not have been the same Clare manager of 1995-97, which should answer the question. A less heralded achievement of Daly, Jamesie, the Lohans et al in ’95 was to become the most celebrated instance of a team that lost a league final but went on to greater things in jig time.

Every once in a while it dispenses a curveball. A decade ago it helped give rise to one of the great unanswered, and unanswerable, hurling questions of the century to date. Had Dublin, the 2011 winners, kept 15 men on the field in the All-Ireland semi-final two years later would they have gone on to lift the MacCarthy Cup for the first time since 1938?

Or an earlier imponderable. Had Wexford managed to beat Cork in either of the two drawn finals in Thurles in 1993 would it have furnished them with the self-belief to see off Kilkenny in the Leinster final (another draw) a couple of months later and, with a gale in their sails, proceed to win the All Ireland? With Christy Keogh, subsequently taken far too soon, now venerated as the man who led them to the Promised Land and Liam Griffin remaining best known as a hotelier?

To today’s business. The group phase of Division 1A ends with the state of play as follows. Clare and Wexford disappointed, and relegated, but each with valid explanations for the latter. The respective treasurers may or may not be buying them.

Limerick quietly pleased. Cork more than pleased provided they don’t do anything silly this evening. Kilkenny meh, Galway likewise. Tipperary not daring to allow themselves be thrilled but hey, it couldn’t have gone much better, could it? Barring a catastrophe in a fortnight’s time they won’t be entering the championship under the cloud they entered it last year following the Portlaoise freetaking fiasco.

That’s an acceptable midterm report for Liam Cahill because, as you’ve read here not more than a million times, Tipp do not win All-Irelands by bolting from the peloton. Their heads have to be in the right place first.

Yet there’s still no getting away from Limerick, whose heads are always in the right place and who’ve extracted more from the 2025 NHL than teams who fail to make the final have a right to.

The two fixtures they deemed to be statement-worthy - versus Cork and Tipperary - they didn’t lose. They’re still capable of cranking out the 30-point salvos when they feel the need. A foot on the accelerator reduced a 12-point deficit at Nowlan Park last week to a four-point gap in the space of 20 minutes. Shane O’Brien’s 1-3 versus Galway underlined the threat he’ll pose in summer. And Peter Casey is back to supply the kind of jackal threat, low to the ground and quick to get the sliotar up, the county lacked in the last 40 metres of the field in the All-Ireland semi-final.

They may even have a TV pundit turned flamboyant elderly goalie between the sticks for some or more of the championship. All kinds of fun guaranteed.

Nobody else could possibly start favourites for the MacCarthy Cup. One suspects their chief benefactor would agree that 7/4 looks about right.

By the by, see the way that earlier in the month the refereeing authorities decided that head-high tackles were an issue and sorted it out in the space of a week? Problem identified, action taken, no messing.

It is dreadfully naïve of us to expect anything of the sort, obviously, but wouldn’t it be nice if they brought the same determination and rigour to sorting out illegal handpassing?

*Kerry and Leix. Knew you’d know.