Big guns missing the point this campaign

TODAY’S column was going to be about the structure of the Allianz Hurling League, about whether Wexford, who next year will almost certainly be plying their trade in Division Two for the third season in four, are entitled to feel hard done by and whether aspiring teams like Carlow, doing their best where they are but with no serious hope of reaching the top flight, have any real incentive for self-improvement.

But on the basis that there’s no subject quite so earnest and arid as the subject of competition structures, and because one or other of us would certainly die of boredom long before the end of such a column (either me writing it or you reading it), talking about events last weekend and their implications for this weekend’s round of games sounds like an altogether better idea. Agree? Thought so.

First off, a strange thread in Division One last Sunday: the low scoring. It was a perfect spring afternoon, the kind we get all too rarely in this country. The sun was shining. The sliotar was bouncing a mile high, or at any rate would have been bouncing a mile high on a decent pitch. If ever there was a day for high scoring, this was it. Yet what transpired? The dog in the afternoon failed to bark.