No rush to judgment as real business yet to begin in Allianz Hurling League

What summer signposts should we take from the opening rounds of the Allianz Hurling League? Very few.

“Make no judgments until the ball speeds up. Then make all the judgments you want” - Eamon O’Shea, February 22nd 2015

The Book of Hurling Quotations isn’t a big one.

Not much bigger than The Illustrated History of Fine Gael Presidents of Ireland or The Manifold Musical Gifts of Ronan Keating.

Maybe it’s because hurling folk prefer to do their talking on the field. A couple of lines spring readily to mind. Only a couple, though.

Christy Ring proclaiming hurling was “only half dressed” without Tipp and musing upon Cork’s mushroom-like qualities. Intriguing, come to think of it, that Ring proved so quotable in later life, given that during his playing days there was never a man like him for doing his talking on the field. There was Liam Griffin and the “Riverdance of sport”.

Hard to forget that one. And yer man from Clarecastle back the page there gave great media too. Anthony Daly, 1997, and “no longer the whipping boys of Munster hurling!!!” complete with as many exclamation marks as you wanted. Anthony Daly, 1995: “In Clare we love our traditional music — but we love our hurling too!” And there was another Daly cracker, uttered in the fractious summer of 1998 as tempers and temperatures began to rise.

The problem people had with Clare, he declared, was that they’d stuck around and become too successful instead of being happy with one All-Ireland and disappearing forever, to “feck off back to Doolin and play their music”. Yours truly was actually the interviewer for that one, in the bar of the Old Ground Hotel in Ennis the day Ger Loughnane gave his famous urbi et orbi on Clare FM.

For the record, “feck” wasn’t actually the word Mr Daly used. Brian Cody? Nah. Not at all, not unless “What did you think yourself, Marty?” qualifies as one of the great bon mots of the era, which it doesn’t. Cody is a man with other things on his mind, having been too busy extending and perpetuating the empire to have time to be Dorothy Parker.

Anyway. Nice line by Eamon O’Shea and of a piece with a comment he made during last year’s National League, when – like the professional analyst he is – he enjoined a gaggle of slightly befuddled hacks against drawing conclusive findings on foot of evidence from a small sample size of three or four league games.

All very Sherlock Holmes, a gentleman who once cautioned it was a capital mistake to theorise in advance of one’s data. (As an aside, O’Shea’s advice can even be broadened and rebooted for the week that’s in it. How many horses that have struggled on soft or heavy ground over the winter will find wings on better ground at Cheltenham?) Problem is, sagely and all as O’Shea spoke, his words are bound to fall on unheeding ears. It’s not that we doubt him, it’s more that we’re going to ignore him and go ahead and make judgments nonetheless.

Because we’re hurling followers and because making judgments is our coin and currency. It is the function of a basic human need. What would be the point of watching matches if we couldn’t pontificate to our hearts content, whether incisively or erroneously, about the participants for days and weeks afterwards?

A few very early, very general judgments, then. Tipp themselves. Nice display of bouncebackability against Galway a fortnight ago. Such focus will be as much as O’Shea can demand of them for the remainder of the month.

No more mood swings, please. Not necessarily three wins, but three solid performances. Cork received an early-morning wake-up call from Kilkenny and acted on it seven days later against Clare. Kilkenny’s current first-teamers showed against Dublin why they won’t be first-teamers when the big guns return.

Dublin themselves have started as Dublin need to start every year: on the front foot. A little fitter, a little faster, a good deal hungrier than their opponents and with the furniture moved around the room and Liam Rushe clearly under orders to go for goal as often as he sees fit.

While it may not count for much come July, Dublin are not the kind of crowd who’ll make the leap from league anonymity to championship ripeness in the way of Ring’s mushrooms. Not for another five or 10 years, if ever. No judgments about Galway. Because they’re Galway.

And only the congenitally naive will be tempted to make judgments about them should they beat the All-Ireland champions tomorrow.

A layer below them, Limerick and Wexford and Waterford all look in decent fettle. With only one of them getting out of Division 1B the dogfight will be something to behold. Yet the demands on Waterford are less pressing than the demands on the other pair.

Another season in the group would afford Derek McGrath and his youngsters the luxury to develop at their own pace, away from the pressures of the hothouse. And no, we hadn’t forgotten Clare. How could we? Two games, two defeats. Does it mean anything? Scarcely.

They made a statement in the opening match last year when Kilkenny came to Cusack Park; it didn’t count for much come September.

The 2014 All-Ireland champions were on view alright that day in Ennis 13 months ago, and they weren’t the 2013 All-Ireland champions. People who contend the Banner’s form has fallen off a cliff – no win in their last six league and championship outings — are missing, perhaps purposely, the reality that they were never on a hot streak to begin with, as evidenced by the county’s league and championship record since 2013 (see box).

We should neither ask too much nor expect too much of Clare even still. They’re the nearest thing hurling has ever seen to a child star who conquers Hollywood at an absurdly early age, then hits adolescence with all its attendant, heightened dramas and inevitably ends up a few years later in rehab, thereafter to find God and inform the world of this interesting discovery.

Davy and the lads don’t have to find God. That’s hard. They merely have to find their mojo again. That’s harder. There may indeed come a time when Clare folk will empanel tribunals of investigation with a brief to examine the county’s failure to kick on after 2013.

But it won’t be tomorrow and it won’t be at the end of the league and it won’t even be if Limerick knock them out of the Munster championship on May 24. Due to their age profile they’ll continue to push and prod the boundaries of their capabilities and experience for the foreseeable future. It may take them another two years to find a degree of consistency.

Tomorrow they face Tipperary and in the week of the death of Tony Reddin, perhaps the greatest goalkeeper of them all and a humble, unassuming man, one doesn’t have to have a runner in the race to hope that Darren Gleeson has the game of his life. Nothing could be more appropriate. In the meantime, no more judgments until the ball speeds up.