The halfway line has yet to be braced in the National Hurling League but there is a distinct Munster hue to the top positions in Division 1A and 1B.<\/p>\n
Sitting in fifth and sixth positions in the former, Kilkenny and Galway will rightly highlight they have played one game less than Cork, Tipperary and Waterford above them.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, one Leinster county could virtually be gone from Division 1A after this weekend. Lose to Galway in Birr on Sunday and Offaly will not be able to catch a minimum of three but possibly as much as five teams.<\/p>\n
A win for Waterford in Kilkenny that same afternoon would all but secure Peter Queally\u2019s side their Division 1A status having come up last year. A point may even be enough \u2013 it was sufficient for Limerick to retain their position in 2025.<\/p>\n
With Clare already looking to be making a swift return to Division 1A, there\u2019s a possibility next year\u2019s top flight could be considered a dry run for the Munster senior hurling championship.<\/p>\n
To give an indication of what a Munster-dominated top flight might look like, 10 of the 21 games would be all-Munster clashes, the same amount of round fixtures in the provincial championship itself.<\/p>\n
The last elite division to feature all five Munster SHC teams was in the eight-team version in 2009. It hardly reflected their prevalence as Kilkenny won the competition and Dublin and Galway finished third and fourth respectively.<\/p>\n
Since then, there have been six all-Munster Division 1 finals and one all-Leinster decider in 16 renewals. Kilkenny have appeared in half of those 16, Tipperary next best with six.<\/p>\n
No team has respected their first two competitions of the year better than The Cats, but as they aren\u2019t part of the Munster gang they don\u2019t feel the love.<\/p>\n
Going back to Eoin Cody\u2019s pre-2023 championship remarks and man-of-the-match interview following the All-Ireland semi-final win over Clare, they have decried the lack of credit coming their way.<\/p>\n
Paddy Deegan has spoken about it as has captain TJ Reid \u2013 \u201cI don’t think people maybe give the team credit for going six in-a-row in Leinster\u201d.<\/p>\n
Manager Derek Lyng recently referenced it too: \u201cI think there’s probably a narrative about Leinster hurling being the weaker relation \u2013 I don’t buy into that at all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Munster\u2019s shade casts long, though. Besides four of the last six All-Ireland finals being all-Munster affairs, 2024 was the first time since 1997 that a Leinster SHC county failed to beat a Munster team.<\/p>\n
If the southern province takes over Division 1A, it will simply be considered a sign of the times. Imitation may be the best form of flattery but such repetition mightn\u2019t be the healthiest thing for hurling.<\/p>\n
Beating Waterford will provide Kilkenny with few bragging rights. It will at least keep them ahead of Galway before high-flying Cork visit on Sunday week.<\/p>\n
If 2027\u2019s Division 1A is going to be a Munster mash, Kilkenny will sure as hell want to be one of the gatecrashers. It is the only way to keep up with Joneses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The halfway line has yet to be braced in the National Hurling League but there is a distinct…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1965,72371,1964,61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-307462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-hurling","9":"tag-munster-gaa","10":"tag-cork-gaa","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}