On Gaelic Games:This being spring, the evidence of new life is all around, from the stirrings of nature to the lengthening of the afternoons. For better or for worse, such hope of rebirth translates to the world of competitive hurling as the stirrings of other counties and the lengthening of the odds on Kilkenny.

Naturally - how else? - this doesn't really occur in March. The game is too unreliable at this time of the year, and given the strength of the county's assets Kilkenny's odds don't move out easily this early in the season.

Yet there was still a frisson at the weekend. It wasn't that the All-Ireland champions can be considered troubled even after dropping three points in the opening two NHL fixtures, but more that Tipperary's morale had registered some upward movement after hanging on against an under-strength home side in Nowlan Park for a nonetheless satisfying win.

One clever summary of the weekend was that the counties who needed a win got it: Tipperary, after the disappointing defeat by Limerick; Galway, getting the Loughnane era off to a positive start in his first really competitive match, and Wexford, after two weekends of trimming.

Even Dublin, awaiting validation of their draw with Kilkenny, are unbeaten after the postponement of their significant match in Belfast.

The trouble with all of this is that it's a video of a trek through the foothills. In years to come people will just fast-forward until they get to the sort of altitude at which we learn interesting things about teams.

Even after such a buoyant outcome as Sunday's, Tipperary might uncomfortably remember that four years ago they had a similarly cheery result in Nowlan Park, only to lose an incontinently high-scoring league final to the same opposition a few weeks later and a couple of months later submit to a humiliating crash in an All-Ireland semi-final once more against Kilkenny.

This decade hurling has operated on a calendar-year basis, which, as in football, has intensified the relevance of league to championship - but in a specific fashion. Four years out of seven, the All-Ireland champions have already won that year's NHL.

From this you can infer that raising a head of steam in the spring gives a team momentum that can drive them through the summer. But it's not that clear.

Kilkenny have recorded three of these doubles, but their position is arguably more akin to Galway in the 1980s, who needed league advancement primarily because they hadn't got the benefit of a provincial championship to help them prepare for the All-Ireland stages.

At this stage the Leinster championship resembles the old Connacht equivalent and even its absence, a point acknowledged by provincial secretary Michael Delaney, who described his council's flagship hurling competition as "practically extinct". So for Kilkenny to be tested they need an extended league run, and by and large they have acquired them.

Tipperary, the other county to win both of the major intercounty prizes in the one season, were an exception in 2001 as the only Munster champions this decade, with the partial exception of Waterford, to prioritise a run in the league in the same season.

Again this is hardly surprising, given that the Munster championship is an anxious affair for its contestants and that committing to play out a high-profile culmination to another competition isn't ideal preparation in the weeks immediately beforehand.

An interesting counter-balance to the argument that success begets success is to look at the fate of teams who have reached NHL finals only to lose. In most cases that achievement has been accorded significance and prompted comments to the effect that such counties could do worse than land a bit of silverware early in the season.

In the event, the impact has been underwhelming. This phenomenon has also been noted in football: teams get optimum chances to sign off on league campaigns, having done well to get to a certain stage but in danger of watching it all unravel if they sustain a bad beating.

In hurling this decade, the record of defeated league finalists is abysmal. Only one, Waterford, went on to win even a provincial title (2004), and one other, Tipperary, to reach the final (2000). All of the others were beaten on their first championship outing, so reservations about the potentially deflating effects of reaching an NHL final are reasonable for any team management.

Limerick last year were a case in point. Afterwards Ger Loughnane remarked that they "had lost nothing" in a competitive defeat by Kilkenny, and few would have disagreed with that assessment. Yet a fortnight later they had tanked in the championship.

Although hindsight unerringly identifies these trends, the positive side of it all for followers of the game is that no one can be sure of how it's going to play out this year. Three seasons ago, after all, Waterford were looking like the embodiment of a team who had sustained too much of a setback in a league final and just a week before their first championship match. Instead they used Clare as firelighters on a hot afternoon in Thurles and won a memorable Munster championship. The trend, however, indicates they were exceptions.

Although Kilkenny won't be losing too much sleep over a peculiarly unproductive couple of weeks, there will be nagging concerns. There have been alibis in the absence of the Ballyhale players - which has done more than deprive the champions of Henry Shefflin and James Fitzpatrick but also of the opportunity to look at some promising players, like Michael Fennelly and TJ Reid, who would presumably have got run-outs - and James McGarry in goal.

But the fact remains that apart from 2000, Kilkenny have not won the All-Ireland without bagging the league, so there will be urgency about their remaining matches.

A senior reporter once answered my query as to whether covering the football championship in the 1970s and 1980s had been . . . well, a little tedious, by pointing out that although it looked predictable in retrospect, no one knew for certain at the time that Kerry would keep winning All-Irelands.

Watching the remainder of the campaign unfold will be interesting, not least because we don't know whether this season is going to be part of the trend or an exception.