On Gaelic Games:Unlike the football championship, surprises in hurling are rare and big scalps not easily taken

EVEN A cursory audit of the opening phase of this summer’s championship indicates once again the extent to which hurling carries the early part of the season. Football campaigns have become like chess, full of early-season manoeuvrings designed to get teams as far as the end game, beginning in August.

Hurling doesn’t have that sense of deferral. The serious stuff may still be in August and September but it has less of the feel of a separate competition and crackles and fizzes from the start in a way football never seems to.

There may have been great wins for Leitrim and Carlow but they are matters for largely private celebration rather than a statement that will resound in the weeks ahead. Already Leitrim’s win over Sligo has been overshadowed by Sunday’s Roscommon demolition.

There will be more optimism in Carlow, who in an astonishing statistic haven’t reached a Leinster semi-final in 53 years, but the less demanding half of the draw has featured some very impressive performances from Wexford (with whom incidentally Carlow have a history of extended tussling, having been involved in three replays in 1941 and two in ’79) and Jason Ryan’s team already has the experience of the 2008 provincial final under their belts.

So many football counties have had moments in the sun since the All-Ireland qualifiers were introduced and even in the provinces an unexpected win can make a season memorable.

Colin Regan, the journalist and former Leitrim player writing on the county website, wistfully defines the parameters within which smaller counties operate. “In my capacity as a journalist I interviewed our former county secretary Tommy Moran when he retired in 2000. Tommy is a legend in Leitrim, and upon his departure from the county board after 25 years’ involvement I asked him what was so special about his association with our county. His reply has always stayed with me. In Kerry their supporters are happy when they win an All-Ireland. In Leitrim they’re happy when we win.”

The experience has been different in hurling. Surprises are rare and big scalps not easily taken. Unexpected results occur but generally don’t involve genuine upheavals in form in the manner of the football championship. For instance although Kerry and Tyrone have dominated the last 10 championships between them, 10 different counties – most of whom didn’t even subsequently reach an All-Ireland final – managed to eliminate either one or the other during that period.

But that’s when football really starts in around seven weeks. In the meantime most of the speculation is taken up with guessing at what stage of preparation the likely contenders are and whether it would “suit” them to reach or win provincial finals.

Hurling is unambiguous. If a team wins its province, it gets straight into the All-Ireland semi-finals and experience indicates that that’s the more successful route so the Munster and Leinster hurling championships are more desirable and consequently generate less opacity about motivations and ambition.

To date the hurling championship has been lively, especially in the context of its predictability and caste-ridden nature.

Cork and Tipperary don’t usually (despite last year) produce one-sided fixtures even if one side is clearly better and their first-round match in Munster last month underlined that in an absorbing contest with some well-taken scores. Tipp stride on in their first season since 2002 defending an All-Ireland but Cork took enough from events to raise confidence for the qualifiers.

Despite expectations for the province being constrained there was an even more exciting clash on Sunday, which went some way to allaying fears that Division Two teams have to start at an unbridgeable disadvantage in the championship.

Limerick’s circumstances mightn’t be those of a typical promoted team – in that very few of the current players took them down in the first place – but they had to contend with the very different levels of intensity in the two divisions as well as the faster tempo and much-reduced space evident in Thurles.

Nonetheless they came very close to winning and once again underlined the peculiar relationship between the counties. Despite Waterford having been much the more successful in the past 10 years or so, during which time they have played seven times, Limerick have twice forced fixtures to a replay and in 2007 provided one of only two All-Ireland semi-final surprises of the qualifier era.

This weekend’s Tipperary-Clare match has the shortest odds so far with Tipp 1 to 12 to win but Clare can at least take encouragement from their fellow Division Two side’s performance, even if that’s assuming a rough equivalence between Waterford and Tipperary.

The big Leinster match was something of a disappointment even if hopes that Wexford would “put it up” to Kilkenny were wishful thinking. The Leinster champions were bringing back too much firepower and like in 1998 when there was enthusiasm for the notion that Dublin’s home draw with Kilkenny might facilitate a surprise – Kilkenny accurately believed Dublin were setting too much store by the powers of Parnell Park to inspire – the venue’s potential role was exaggerated.

It’s one of the problems for teams like Wexford that they have little apparent control over when and whether they can deliver their best form. They didn’t get near that on Saturday evening, having been hobbled by the loss of two thirds of the half-back line to injury by the 13th minute.

At least the win over Kilkenny in the under-21 championship further fuelled the feeling that Wexford are at last getting their act together at development level and hoping to challenge Dublin for the title of number-one under-age contender in the province.

This coming weekend is vital for the Dublin project and indeed their semi-final opponents Galway. Defeat will be a serious setback for either team.

Dublin, whose league standing has outstripped their championship presence in recent years, can’t make assumptions about playing the westerners but to sustain an impact commensurate with their status as NHL winners Anthony Daly’s team have to believe they can beat a side that struggled so visibly against Westmeath.

It looked as if Offaly would have to be pleased with the battling display against Dublin considering the number of players they were missing but events in the county at the moment indicate that all is not well with the bizarre row over players accessing a training session combining with ongoing rumblings about the status of St Brendan’s Park in Birr as the county’s primary hurling venue together with relegation in the league and ongoing injuries to suggest this year is going to be best forgotten.

Overall though, hurling’s balance sheet at this stage of the summer looks pretty healthy.

smoran@irishtimes.com