In a week of off-field turbulence for the GAA, we have been reminded that the curse of Rule 21 hasn't gone away (you know) with threats of legal action, campaigns against sponsors, more clerical disapproval than at any time since the Parnell split and complaints of intimidation.

There has been commercial turmoil with main sponsors disenchanted at the prospect of piggy-backing on television coverage and haggles about "slices of the action" more usually associated with bad gangster films. Yet in the midst of all this are issues as perennial as lousy football matches.

Two weeks ago, the public was treated to the spectacle of two provincial champions taking a bow before the end of May and the argument was made that a four-and-a-half month competition which culls half its contestants within weeks is being run with few concessions to sanity.

Anyway that aside, there have been five weeks of championship action and it is time to look at how the winners and losers are tallying to date in hurling. One of the consequences of the amateur obsession with knockout competition (professionals and semi-professionals need the regular gate receipts) is that the dividing line between success and failure is so starkly defined that stakes are enormously high when two evenly matches teams square off on a winner-takes-all basis.

It helps explain the violence that bubbles under the surface of many big games. There is no margin for error, no second chance (apart from the limited, but welcome, format of the hurling championship which recycles two teams a year) and a desperation that can sometimes get out of hand.

That was why it was so interesting to watch hurling's "back door" in operation last season. Both Tipperary and Kilkenny admitted to feelings of disorientation at being allowed back into the championship after decisive defeats in their provincial finals.

Both managed a rehabilitation and not surprisingly: we're told that nothing teaches a team lessons like defeat, so a team that can lose and play again should be able to improve dramatically.

But there are still counties for whom the road goes no further than the next defeat, teams for whom another redemptive match would offer enormous compensation but who must wait for another year.

Hurling is providing the most poignant stories on all sides. Waterford and Cork we'll come to in a minute but Dublin's savage fate at the hands of Kilkenny was the most scarifying experience of the early rounds. Maybe there was hubris involved in all the talk about Dublin never having a better chance to beat Kilkenny but it was true.

On several fronts, everything was set up for Michael O'Grady's team. Under the experimental championship hurling format, they would have had one match against Laois (as opposed to Offaly or Wexford) between themselves and the All-Ireland series had Kilkenny been overcome. The special congress in Wexford this October will decide on the future of that experiment and so conceivably the opportunity mightn't arise again.

The match was at home, again a chance that won't come Dublin's way for a while as it was based on Croke Park's inability to stage the match because of the umm concert by two talented pianists which made the ground off-limits for the hurling match. It is reasonable to expect that headquarters will be used in future after Kilkenny get their return match out of the way.

Kilkenny in trouble and Dublin confident. How surreal it all seems in retrospect. Michael O'Grady has striven so hard to raise the game and ambition of Dublin hurling that the scale of the reverse is impossible to explain. It may be that Dublin hurlers, like many other teams with high hopes in football and hurling, are just not up to the standard required and somewhere within themselves, they know it.

Certainly, O'Grady's firm conviction that Dublin will win an All-Ireland within six years now looks a bit illusory. If the county does improve, doubtless the Kilkenny mauling will be invested with all sorts of motivational significance but as things stand, it just looks like a mauling pure and simple.

In League terms, Dublin were superior to both Cork and Waterford in last year's Division Two. Since then, the two Munster counties have travelled through Division One and ended up in last month's NHL final and may yet face each other in the Munster final. Crucially their quality of player is considerably better than Dublin's. At the heart of both teams is a large All-Ireland winning under-21 contingent, Waterford's five years older than Cork's, four of whose seniors are still in the grade this year. Under-age achievement would seem a priority for Dublin.

In the last two weeks, both Tipperary and Limerick who gave everyone a remarkable drawn Munster final only two years ago dropped out a round short of safety. There was something predictable about the manner of the failing, even if Waterford excelled themselves in exploiting Tipperary.

Limerick have struggled so hard over the years to overcome the team's limitations that there was precious little left in the tank. The decline of their main influences made the holding job impossible.

There's something oddly compatible about Limerick and Tipperary, like looking at a reversed image. Limerick have an abysmal under-age record and apparently little coming up through the ranks whereas Tipperary have had a good run at under-age in recent years and have a reasonable supply of young players with potential.

Yet all along, there has been a flaw in the Tipperary team. Ever since winning the 1991 All-Ireland, the team under various managements has lost championship encounters to teams with greater appetite and stomach for the fray. The best performances by the county in recent times were arguably last year's All-Ireland semi-final, particularly, and final against Wexford and Clare.

The most obvious aspects of those matches was that Tipperary were under no pressure to win them, so overwhelming was the favouritism of their opponents. Liberated from the stifling confines of mano a mano combat in matches that offered nothing more or less than an even chance, they prospered and looked to have built a sound base from which to build a major championship opportunity this season.

It didn't happen and it's hard not to reflect on the fact that if Tipperary had the same indomitable spirit and indifference to their limitations that Limerick so regularly displayed, recent history might have been different. Similarly, had Limerick a smidgin of Tipperary's forward talent, recent history would have been different.