Limerick are, as per Teresa Mannion’s advice, better off not making unnecessary journeys to the well

Limerick's Tom Morrissey loses his helmet from a challenge by Wexford's Paudie Foley and Matthew O'Hanlon in their Allianz Hurling League Round 1 tie at Wexford Park

Maybe we should stop the hurling year now. Quit while we’re ahead.

A first All-Ireland club senior title for Waterford. A first All-Ireland club intermediate title for Kildare. Most improbable and by some distance most heartwarming, a first Harty Cup title for a team from Tulla. If Tommy Daly wasn’t resting easily on that windswept hill of his he is today.

Maybe we should stop the hurling year now. Limerick will be back soon. Limerick, the 2018 fairytale hero who grew into an ogre. The sight of the dispossessed becoming the landlord is ever a passion killer.

It’s no slight on Cork to hold that if John Kiely’s side really want to win tomorrow they’ll do so. It’s no slight on Limerick to hold that any message they wanted to deliver to these opponents – to the rest of the hurling world, come to that - was delivered last August and that they may not be unduly exercised to repeat it.

Well, either that or else Limerick were so stung by the defeats to Wexford and Galway that they’ll feel the need to overcompensate and Kiely will send them out sufficiently motivated to oblige. Best for the writer to cover all bases. In the words of the noted defamation lawyer Peter Carter Ruck, never impute a state of mind.

Readers have been exposed here in the past to the hypothesis that each spring the MacCarthy Cup holders of the day have one big and blazing performance in them, one exhibition of shock and awe, just to remind all comers who’s boss. Look on my works and despair, etc. On that basis one fears for Offaly when they fetch up on the Ennis Road next month.

At this stage in their evolution, however, Limerick are, as per Teresa Mannion’s advice, better off not making unnecessary journeys to the well. Nor, in view of the diligence with which they hoarded their petrol and saved their powder over the past two championships, will they be tempted to do so. Had he been around 80 years ago Paul Kinnerk would have made a splendid Minister for Rationing during the Emergency.

Following the loss to Galway a fortnight ago Kiely acknowledged the champions to be behind the curve - and even further behind the curve than would otherwise have been the case, one suspects, because the reversion to the provincial round robins has rendered Championship 2022 a longer and trickier course than Championship 2021, full of twists and turns and chicanes and refuelling stops.

The same questions face every manager. How conducive or otherwise is a five-match provincial campaign to an All-Ireland challenge? And in what ways can it be made more conducive? In other words, which fixtures will each county target and which will they employ for rotation purposes?

Limerick didn’t want to win the league, which represents a short-term source of encouragement for Wexford and Dublin. They are not absolutely required to win Munster and it’s feasible that they won’t try. One certainty is that they won’t reach the provincial final by winning all four preliminary matches.

The other obvious potential beneficiaries of Limerick's situation are Waterford, now commonly deemed to be at – that phrase again - a stage in their evolution under Liam Cahill where silverware of some shape is required. Waterford are possible league champions. They’re possible Munster champions. They won’t be both. But one trophy or the other would be most acceptable and could be acquired without the slightest damage to their MacCarthy Cup prospects.

In the long term the difficulty of finding ways to destabilise the champions remains. The knottiness of the task was referred to by Eamon O’Shea after last year’s All Ireland final.

In his first coming with Liam Sheedy the genial economics professor had burned gallons of midnight oil trying to synthesise ways of getting at the Kilkenny defence. In his second coming with Sheedy he’d burned gallons of midnight oil trying to synthesise ways of getting at the Limerick defence.

The former proved easier than the latter. Think of it as Kilkenny wearing a suit of armour – formidable plating, yes, but vulnerable to an angled knife at close quarters – and Limerick wearing Bilbo Baggins’s mithril coat. Light, flexible, all-over protection.

Here’s one thing we definitely won’t see. Early in the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final Eoin Murphy went long off the tee. The Limerick midfielders were at midfield (imagine!), the sliotar landed on the 20-metre line and Colin Fennelly brushed Sean Finn aside to give Kilkenny an initiative they would claw to.

Not only is it impossible to visualise anyone brushing Finn aside these days, it’s also impossible to posit a scenario where Limerick’s midfielders are not protecting their defence like some missile shield in Star Wars. This is an age where defenders create and midfielders defend.

Some other observations.

Cork haven’t been league champions since Bill Clinton was in the White House. Wexford haven’t been league champions since Richard Nixon was in the White House. No possible harm could attend either county ending their respective hiatus. In any case history indicates that the beneficial effects of a league success are not necessarily confined to the season in question. Think of what Cork got up to a year after 1998.

Tipp versus Kilkenny a fortnight ago. Shane Dowling wasn’t flattering about the lack of quality in the encounter and he wasn’t being unfair either. Yet it’s important to remind ourselves of the pair’s reduced station in life. This isn’t 2014, still less 2009-10, any more and it showed.

Brian Cody, invariably anodyne to the point of somnolence during post-match discourse with the media, had been moved to describe his team’s performance against Antrim as “very unimpressive”. Enough said.

As for Tipperary, they find themselves where Kilkenny found themselves in 2016, deprived almost overnight of a wealth of institutional knowledge.

With 15 minutes remaining on some hot day come summer they’ll look around to Brendan and Padraic Maher for ballast and reassurance and Brendan and Padraic Maher won’t be there to provide it. Beyond Colm Bonnar’s control, of course, and he’s had the good sense to avoid talk of All-Irelands.

The defeat to Kerry will be forgotten about if Tipperary go on to lift the MacCarthy Cup (or be joked about by those who do remember it). It won’t be forgotten if they don’t. Still, in a world where forwards are running around at 90 miles an hour, as long as Tipp have Jason Forde they have someone who can stand still and arch over points from 60 metres. It is quite the party piece and it will never go out of fashion.

British political journalists are great lads for games of If the Prime Minister Fell Under a Bus Tomorrow – ie who’d be his or her successor? If Limerick fell under a bus tomorrow the shortlist of putative successors is a short list indeed. Galway and Waterford. Nobody else.

Galway because Henry may get a tune out of them, even in his first season; it’d be the kind of thing Henry would do. Waterford because, although they have ten points to make up on the champions from last season, the early straws in the wind are encouraging.

Ballygunner’s triumph and the putative ripple effect. Mikey Kiely, king of the injury-time goals. The return of Tadhg de Búrca. The addition to Cahill’s backroom team of Tony Browne. There isn’t a man on Suirside with more institutional knowledge of his own, and incidentally if there’s a roll call of candidates more suited to the title of greatest Waterford hurler ever it’s not a lengthy one.

Straws in the wind but nothing more, you’ll respond. Marginal gains, if even that. Yes and yes.

But it’s something to be going on with. No need to stop the year just yet.