Alarms sound after Leinster mismatches

The weekend's lopsided Leinster hurling semi-finals have added to worries about the game's shrinking list of contenders. With Kilkenny now 1 to 10 to win the provincial title and 6 to 4 for the All-Ireland despite having four matches to play, there is a hardening conviction that for the first time in GAA history Cork and Kilkenny will contest a third successive All-Ireland final.

It's a prospect that bothers Diarmuid Healy, who coached Offaly to the county's first All-Ireland in 1981 and later managed his native Kilkenny before filling the short-lived position of director of hurling in Dublin.

"I'm concerned about hurling," he says. "If Cork and Kilkenny were to appear again in this year's All-Ireland final it would be good for Cork and Kilkenny but disastrous for hurling."

He is sceptical, however, that such an outcome is as inevitable as is being assumed.

"A lot of teams seem to feel Kilkenny can't be beaten, and that's a crazy position. I've seen supposedly unbeatable teams before come unstuck against what was regarded as inferior opposition.

"Kilkenny are if anything now in an awkward situation, being set up as unbeatable. It will take a team with a positive attitude to beat them and realistically the contenders are down to Cork, Waterford and maybe Galway, but they're not unbeatable."

His comments come in the aftermath of a desperately one-sided semi-finals bill at Croke Park that saw Offaly slump to a 31-point defeat and Laois lose to Wexford by 11 for a whopping cumulative margin of 42 points.

Healy went to Offaly just over 25 years ago and kick-started two decades of the county competing at the top. Despite the stark evidence he doesn't believe things are back where they started.

"Scorewise things have gone back but that's not the whole story. At one stage on Sunday Offaly were matching Kilkenny in terms of points scored but they were very poor at the back. The slow pace in Division Two wouldn't have helped and Kilkenny got off to a fast start. Offaly have some good hurlers but they lack balance.

"I don't think they're as bad as they looked but there was a certain amount of negative publicity leading up to the match and that had to affect their mental approach. That was one of the two reasons I think it happened - that and the effects of spending a season in Division Two of the League."

Kilkenny's dominance at senior level in recent years - three All-Irelands in five years - has been underpinned by growing underage success.

The county dominated Leinster minor hurling in the 1990s but after 1993 made no impact at All-Ireland senior level.

Ironically, it wasn't until Offaly broke that 10-year sequence in 2000 that Kilkenny decided to follow the lead of other counties and establish the development squad system.

Since then the preparation of hurlers from a young age in Kilkenny has become widely acknowledged as the best in the country. Players like Richie Power, who came through his first senior championship match on Sunday after a storied underage career, are the first products of this system.

Incredible as it may seem, Offaly have only recently taken up the idea of development squads for elite players in younger age groups. Healy says this points to one of the reasons the county is struggling.

"There's been a lot of effort recently put into development squads in Offaly. This is the sort of thing that should have been done 10 years ago when the county was going well. You have to work with a senior team but the future is about development squads and giving them something to aspire to. In that sense Sunday won't have helped."

Then there is the question of whether the provincial system is serving hurling well nowadays - or vice versa. Whereas Munster continues to provide a well-supported championship (although some of the crowds this year have been disappointing), Leinster is fast losing the box-office appeal that characterised the province in the 1990s.

"Leinster's not good at the moment," says Healy, "and I think it may be time to look at the whole provincial structure, maybe base it on two provinces and bring Galway and Antrim into Leinster. It would be more sensible but I know that the authorities in Galway weren't keen on that when approached."

Finally, Healy emphasises the importance of attitude for teams trying to break through and buck the system.

"I remember in the winter of 1980 after a training session, we were chatting in the dressingroom about a survey in one of the papers about who'd win the All-Ireland. I asked around who did they think would win and all sorts of names came out: Galway, Cork, et cetera. Not one player mentioned Offaly.

"For another half an hour I kept them there and ate them. 'How can you hope to perform at a higher level when you don't even think of yourselves at that level?' I asked them.

"You have to have basic skills but when it comes to important matches the mental approach is equally significant."