Is hurling 2010 already set in stone?

This year’s All-Ireland final will, unless Galway trip up one or the other along the way, be contested by Tipperary and Kilkenny. Nothing that happens during the National League will alter this state of affairs. — Discuss (among yourselves).

TWO rounds into the Hurling League and what news on the Rialto? Tipp losing their opening brace of fixtures, not unduly surprisingly in the circumstances. Kilkenny and Galway winning theirs: scarcely a surprise either. Cork beating Offaly and coming from eight points down at half-time to very nearly get a result at Nowlan Park, a fightback that may have implications but — and we’ll get to this in a minute — may not. Dublin doing rather nicely, Waterford ditto. Wexford already fighting a rearguard action.

Elsewhere Limerick comfortably beat Clare in the first of the two matches that will matter in Division 2, proof that Donal O’Grady has speedily imposed the kind of riar agus eagar on his adopted county that one associates with teams coached by An tÚasal O’G. And a couple of weekends ago, Jedward became the least welcome visitors to Croke Park the day of a Dublin/Tipperary game since the Black and Tans. If Declan Ryan needed an excuse in the aftermath of defeat, this was a perfectly valid one.