League anomalies strangely familiar

LockerRoom: Ah the league, the league, the league. What is to be done with the National Hurling League? This year's edition has just puttered out, looking pale and anaemic compared to its more robust football brother. Still we couldn't leave it be.

A hack's penitential work is never done. Thus, off to Belfast with us on Saturday to see how the Blueprint for Dublin Hurling was working out vis-à-vis the current league. Couldn't lay fingers on the actual document at time of writing but for those who keep it always handy we are now at the chapter titled Playing Possum. In other words the Dub hurlers are pretending to be dead while animals of prey sniff them indifferently.

Zero for eight in the league went the Dubs. Since they beat Westmeath in the championship last summer they haven't won a competitive game and have become hurling's best example of a work in regress.

This morbid relegation-zone section of the league has been especially hard to watch for the few hundred or so who have had the stomach to actually go along. In Casement Park on Saturday you could hear a man eating a bag of crisps out on the Falls Road so quiet was it in the ground.

Maybe there's a plan. Maybe the divine pattern isn't visible to ordinary mortals but the current plight of the senior team certainly makes hurling a harder sell to youngsters around the city.

Anyway, Dublin have one distinction among hurling counties. They have played the league with a straight bat. Early on when there was talk of heavy training hobbling the lads there was also a suggestion that explosive speed might start getting results when the longer evenings came around. No way. Dublin got better and hurled honestly but the confidence was gone.

And what does it all mean at the end? The league will be restructured with eight teams in the first division, no doubt, and Dublin given a respectability they don't quite deserve in the second division. Was there any value at all in the last couple of months of hurling activity? What has been learned? Is it reliable? Well, Dublin are our banker bet, of course. It's safe at this stage to offer to eat our finest asbestos hat if Dublin win the hurling All-Ireland this year.

That, though, is about all that is clearer now the smoke has gone. There's been a lot of teams faking it through this slightly surreal National Hurling League and the split-level structure allows some to fake it some of the time and others to fake it all of the time. Who can blame them? When the hurling swamis sit down soon to look at the structure all will change again.

Wexford throw in a complete howler of a performance every league campaign and even if last week's 30-point whipping will remain a landmark for some time, you look at their injury list and the fact they decided the jig was up after about 10 minutes in Nowlan Park and put them down as being healthier than they look. The next serious game they are likely to have is the Leinster final, presuming they have enough ambulant players to take care, Lord help us, of the winners of Dublin and Laois. We'll see then.

Which leaves Kilkenny and Offaly from Leinster. Offaly without Brian Whelahan don't really scare anyone, especially not at this time of year - not even Carlow. After an uninspired springtime visiting the sort of places Offaly hurlers had forgotten existed, it'll take John McIntyre some considerable effort to convince his young players they are ready and able for Kilkenny.

And Kilkenny? Brian Cody's relentless transfusing of his team using new talent continues apace. Eoin Larkin has scored well in the league since getting a winner's medal with James Stephens on Paddy's Day but the suspicion is that Brian Barry may be a better bet for the long haul in Cats colours. Barry has the requisite energy and workrate for the middle and his long-range striking from hand and from frees is wonderful.

And elsewhere, despite all the talk of burnout and waning wonders, Kilkenny don't have too many holes to fill. Richie Power is a blue-chip prospect who has probably skipped Eddie Brennan and Cha Fitzpatrick for a place in the forward line. Martin Comerford is finding some form again and the moveable feast that is Tommy Walsh's genius can fill out a forward line nicely if need be.

Despite a good campaign with his club and a grand performance last week against Wexford, Peter Barry must feel some hot breathing down his neck for the centre-back position. Richie Mullally? Seán Dowling? JJ Delaney? Another year for Barry. It's the sort of crisis most counties would trade two good minors for. Next weekend's selection for the final will tell us much about how Kilkenny are thinking of setting out the stall this year.

We watched Limerick beat Dublin in an almost empty Parnell Park last Sunday before whizzing to Kilkenny. It was like travelling to see two different sports on the same afternoon. Limerick looked poor and disjointed, Dublin the same. The way Kilkenny dunted Wexford back into the doldrums suggested they'd beat the pick of the three teams with ease. The league has offered nourishment for Kilkenny at least after last summer's epic and fruitless journey.

As for Limerick? Is there a solution for them before that entire series of under-21 successes pass into the mists of time as one of the greatest wastes of potential the game has seen? Probably not. It's nice for any manager when the players who give the most trouble are those with the least talent. They can be rooted out mercilessly and hung from lamp posts as examples. When your good players are a little mad in the head, however, and there's a major crisis every full moon, it's a different story.

Limerick should be threatening to win All-Irelands on foot of their recent under-21 record. Tipp's hopes of winning them have probably been set back on foot of their hideous beating in last year's under-21 final.

You get the impression Tipp have played the league fairly straight. The need to find their own personality as a team is so urgent they hardly have any need for throwing shapes and dummies. Ditto Galway, who got a little profligate towards the end of things.

What about Cork? Well anyone who believes their form over the last three league games means anything should sign up for a Nigerian investment plan involving a rich man who can't access his money.

So at the end of the league we are faced with a Clare-Kilkenny final that is more fascinating than we could have hoped. Clare are like a certain type of cowboy in a certain type of western: age may diminish them but they are never quite dead. It's 11 years since we watched them lose a league final to Kilkenny and unanimously pronounced they were going nowhere. Since then we've been occasionally harmonious in our view that they are all washed up.

No forwards. No kids. No Loughnane. No Jamesie or Ollie. And yet they confound us. They have finished out this league playing each match as if it were something personal. And up front they have produced a forward line you wouldn't be embarrassed to bring home with you. Tony Griffin gets better on each trip home from Nova Scotia. Barry Nugent is Ollie Baker with better skills. Tony Carmody does damage on his day, and then there's Niall Gilligan and Andrew Quinn and perhaps Daithí O'Connell.

Clare and Kilkenny will make a match a little more interesting than the competition has deserved. And then we'll take the league apart and put it back together in some other form for next year, still hoping that somehow all the rejigging will compensate for the lack of new counties emerging. An eight-team first division seems just right.