Start of National Hurling League: Seán Moran explains why closer links between league and championship success cannot apply universally.

The Allianz National Hurling League starts tomorrow with holders Kilkenny on the trail of a record third successive league-and-championship double. This prospect emphasises both the county's domination of senior hurling and the apparent link between success in the spring and All-Ireland victory.

Yet over the past 15 seasons the league roll of honour hasn't provided a much more reliable correlation to championship achievement than its football counterpart. Seven winners have gone on to add the hurling All-Ireland within three years and the comparable football figure is the same.

The uneven distribution of hurling counties is a complicating factor. Galway are high on the list of counties with a regular history of reaching hurling league finals, six times over the above 15-year period. The county's isolation in Connacht partly explains this. With a championship that never started seriously until August, Galway could go full tilt at the league and still have plenty of time to recover.

Tipperary have featured in eight finals over that period. Nicholas English has seen the competition as a player and as a manager. In fact it was his team who began the double-winning trend three years ago. He says there is a clear watershed in the league, which can be marked at the adoption of the calendar-year season in 1997.

"The defining moment for the league was when it became all played in the one year, from February on," says English.

"Previously any team that won the All-Ireland treated the early stages of the league like a lap of honour. After that it became more important as preparation for the championship."

The figures bear out the change in emphasis. In the years since the calendar year was introduced (and excluding 1997, when the league wasn't concluded before the championship and stretched on until October) the proportion of teams adding an All-Ireland within three years of winning the league rises from under 50 per cent to 80 per cent. So disconnected from bright future prospects was the league up to 1998 that the previous six winning managers weren't around long enough even to defend the title.

The new importance of the competition comes from its proximity to the summer. According to English, the performances of players in the spring has become far more relevant and this can be seen in the intensity of matches.

"I found in coaching that if guys aren't showing form in March or April they're not going to have it in the summer. Take the last couple of Kilkenny-Tipperary games in recent years. They've been of a high standard and ultra-competitive (although he excludes last year's high-scoring final between the counties, which he describes as 'a bit false'). You need to show form."

Last year the GAA introduced a new format for the league, bringing together the top three teams from Divisions One A and One B into a final group. Four months later the All-Ireland semi-finalists had all played in that final group. Furthermore, throughout the summer no county within that top group lost a championship match to opponents from outside it.

While there is some time to go before that level of correlation can be confirmed as a trend the old reservation about league success militating against championship prospects would now seem to be baseless.

"There's been a high correlation between doing well in the league and the championship," says English. "You will get an individual case like Tipp playing Cork a couple of years ago (2002 semi-final) when they had injuries and were due to play in the championship a couple of weeks later. That was an unusual situation."

English warns, however, that despite the enhanced relevance of the league, there is evidence that Munster counties may struggle to replicate Tipperary's recent double in the years ahead. Even in 2001 English's team had to contend with playing the league final against Clare only two weeks before facing the same opposition in the championship.

The most competitive provincial championship begins within days of the league final. This year Clare and Waterford play each other a week after the scheduled final. New Clare manager Anthony Daly has already gone public with his unwillingness to jeopardise long-term ambitions for a league run.

With fixtures becoming more and more congested between the calendar year season in both football and hurling leagues and the qualifier system now up and running in both codes, the running of one competition into the other is perhaps inevitable, but English reckons the impact is uneven.

"It's a problem in Munster but Leinster teams are particularly well suited by the league. In general though teams doing well in the league will do well in the championship or at least teams that aren't going well won't do well in the championship."