League allure dims further

Little by little the Church & General National Hurling League has found itself in nearly as low repute as its football counterpart. It starts tomorrow with a full series of matches against a backdrop of decreasing relevance to the championship and a status of almost a consolation prize, a second-division title for teams who won't win the championship.

The vocabulary of managers is significant as the league is faintly praised for its experimental possibilities and its ability to develop a habit of winning. Even these attributes are over-rated with only one county in the last decade benefiting sufficiently from a league win to add an All-Ireland (There are cases of counties who followed titles with championship success - eg. Offaly and Limerick - but the progress was achieved under new management and with different players).

When Cork followed the 1998 NHL with last year's championship, the progression still featured half a dozen newcomers and, arguably, Jimmy Barry-Murphy and his panel learned more from the spanking administered by Clare in the 1998 Munster championship than they did from the NHL win a month previously.

That matters have come to this stage is a shame when the success of the calendar year in its inaugural season of 1997 is considered. Then a combination of good weather and a clutch of likely contenders for summer success guaranteed high public interest and some tremendous matches.

Unfortunately the public showed little interest in the latter stages of the competition being played in conjunction with the championship and the counties involved in both competitions killed off their interest in the league as quickly as possible.

This was followed by the pushing forward of the competition's starting-date to February which brought with it the guarantee of a couple of meaningless matches played in dire conditions. Its relevance to summer dimmed, the league has been taken notably less seriously in the subsequent years.

To an extent this is understandable. It's better to absorb the lessons of defeat in April or May than to do so in June or July. Clare in 1995 and Wexford a year later both freely acknowledged the role in their All-Ireland success of lessons learned in league defeats. Yet this was always the case.

The difference is that the spiralling emphasis on physical fitness has made it very difficult for teams to peak both in May and later in the summer.

Increasingly teams prioritise along the lines that a league title is something to aim for if championship prospects are doubtful. If, however, a county is a contender, it's unlikely the league will be pushed too hard. This is a formula which covers every county except Galway whose direct access to the All-Ireland allows more room for manoeuvre.

In the midst of all this, the public have unsurprisingly become fairly indifferent to the whole affair and last year's final attendance of 16,000 showed as much.