LockerRoom: What a strange and weird world the qualifiers have created. Every year teams wander off into the twilight zone and by the time they get back to the big house on Jones' Road they have metamorphosed into something different.

It's the sort of thing which you imagine to be good for the soul. Every team should endure such suffering once in its lifetime. So many days and so many nights in the wilderness but still the chance to yak it up about the promised land. Modest crowds but the nourishing thought that you'll be back and you'll show everyone.

This is the time of year for the serious anthropologist to study the effects of travails in the qualifier world and for the gadfly columnist to fill an 1,100-word space on the same subject.

Thurles on Saturday then - and briefly an end to Kilkenny's sufferings. A respite anyway. They put Clare away, and putting Clare away being a stake-through-the-heart job that was a tiring day's work. They'd have been pleased but Kilkenny have been ravaged by the qualifiers instead of inflated. Afterwards they came out onto the field and, in front of a small but adoring crowd, did a warm down. They looked as serious as divers coming up slowly, fearing the bends.

They have been the surprise of the summer, proof as the song says that you never can tell. We thought they would be regal, turning two All-Irelands into three and making a good period into an era. When Wexford dunted them out of the Leinster championship we told ourselves Kilkenny would still be dangerous, the hunger for three-in-a row would make them mean, wounded gunslingers.

Then they went and riddled Dublin and Galway and we rubbed our chins sagely and insisted Kilkenny were better than ever. And in Croke Park last Sunday, after Cork had dissolved Antrim, we waited for Clare and Kilkenny and supposed the combined margins from the two games might be aggregated to some sort of record.

We know now, though, where the fault-lines lie. That's all we know. Kilkenny got through on Saturday and finished with a flourish from DJ that goes straight into the sexy-scores section of his next video. They looked tired and wheezy though.

And less confident of their place in the world. Some of the wides they contrived were alarming and some of the flat performances were worrying because they represented a trend of flatness rather than a dip.

It's funny. Earlier in the year I heard Brian Whelahan talking and he reckoned Kilkenny might be taken by a side which hustled and pulled hard first time. He'd noticed that over the years Kilkenny had, with the exception of Tommy Walsh, become bigger, more difficult to knock off the ball once they had it but he thought that perhaps a team which could stop them getting the ball too often might get a result. A team with some heft and the ability to pull fast and early, especially with the ball on the floor.

So now Kilkenny come to Croke Park next week with four games played since the Wexford misadventure, an uncommonly busy summer for a thoroughbred team. When he went to their dressing-room on Saturday Anthony Daly told Kilkenny their summer reminded him of Clare's in 1999, stumbling through game after game in search of another All-Ireland.

Clare had more of the temperament to do that though. Kilkenny in the last 10 minutes on Saturday looked tired. They won because their race memory programmes them to get scores at the critical period in games but in closing out the deal they didn't look greedy or flash the way they can do. They just looked relieved. Which makes next Sunday all the more intriguing. For Kilkenny to pick themselves up and regain the energy and the appetite and correct the glitches which have crept into their game would be an astonishing achievement.

Afterwards Brian Cody pointed out that you wouldn't find him complaining about the business of having to play every weekend but you could tell it was a worry. Still Mick Kavanagh is fresh and Tommy Walsh becomes more legendary with every outing. Next Sunday's is one of those games it's hard to wait for.

Neither did Brian Cody complain publicly about what happened to Henry Shefflin. He should have. The beautiful game is dirtied by such moments. For all the wonder that a hurling summer provides, for all the marketing of the game which great players and great games do as a matter of course, one incident like Saturday's sets it way back, sends parents taking their kids out of hurling mini-leagues, gets the best players fearing that they go into games unprotected.

It's nothing but dumb luck that Henry Shefflin isn't blind in one eye this morning and the story of his blinding the front-page headline across every newspaper in the country. Of an epic summer of hurling that would be the only memory. Instead the transgressions is a trespass onto our enjoyment, warning.

And while it's sorted the headlines will be filled again by Tommy Lyons and the Dubs. Not certainly but maybe. Probably. Dublin went away with their tails between their legs after the Westmeath business and coming back to Croke Park yesterday needed nothing more urgent than to win a game which was close going into the final 10 minutes. They did that and afterwards Tommy was more of his old self than he has been in a year. All that chat and natural effusiveness which has been contained for so long is bubbling volcanically to the surface! We're just a win away from the full restoration of normal arse-boxing services. In hi-fi.

And Tommy had a right to smile and relax. Dublin are still a work-in-progress but you could see the work is actually progressing. Ian Robertson set up any number of scores, especially in the second half. Jason Sherlock and Alan Brogan buzzed and hummed. From centre forward Ciarán Whelan can sometimes look frightening.

Other bonuses too. Darren Magee looking better with each game. Bryan Cullen scoring a point from centre back which was better than any he scored in his sojourn at centre forward.

There were times, of course, when Roscommon did as they pleased with the Dublin defence. Did as they pleased but in a gentlemanly way stopped short of scoring goals. It was as if they merely wished to point out deficiencies rather than punish them. Defence though is usually a strong suit for Dublin and they have enough strength in a bench which includes Shane Ryan, Peadar Andrews and David Henry to juggle their resources when they face meaner forwards.

That's the appealing thing about the qualifiers. Teams sink. Other inflate like helium balloons. Everything is in constant flux. Players going up and down in the pecking order. Managers experimenting frantically. Morale bubbling slowly.

Fans disaffected one week. Passionate the next. Yesterday we lost Dessie Farrell and Beano McDonald to cruel looking injuries. More tales. More jagged twists.

There are hundreds of stories out there in the qualifier city. This weekend gave us just two of them.