Kilkenny may be as vulnerable as they’ve been for some time, but the Cats are still good enough to collect another Leinster senior hurling championship title this summer.
The provincial kingpins have lost forwards Ger Aylward and James Maher to injuries, and Richie Power is now retired, but with TJ Reid and Richie Hogan still on board, they remain the team to beat.
Clare exposed chinks in their armour with a big victory in the Allianz League semi-final but Kilkenny boss Brian Cody will have heeded the lessons from that fixture and he’s a man who thrives on revenge missions.
A Clare-Kilkenny championship clash would be something to truly savour but the Noresiders have some Leinster business to attend to first.
They’ll meet the winners of Wexford and Dublin for a place in the final, with Galway expected to come through from the opposite half of the draw.
Dublin face Wexford at Croke Park this Saturday, and the winners take on the might of Kilkenny on 11 June.
On 5 June, Galway meet round-robin winners Westmeath, with Laois pitted against Offaly or Kerry
The winners of those two ties will clash in the Leinster semi-final on 19 June and the Bob O’Keeffe Cup will be presented to the winning captain on 3 July when the final is down for decision at Croke Park.
Dublin
It’s difficult to know what to expect from Dublin, who are equally capable of mixing the good with the bad.
Manager Ger Cunningham certainly learned a lot during his first season at the helm and made a couple of tough calls before Christmas when experienced players Simon Lambert and Alan Nolan were deemed surplus to requirements, while former All-Star Danny Sutcliffe opted out.
The progress of Cuala in the Dublin championship and into Leinster last year was a boost to the county after an up and down inter-county season.
They opened the campaign well, holding Galway to a draw at Croke Park, but were buried under an avalanche of goals in a one-sided Tullamore replay.
Dublin hit back to bounce Laois out of the qualifiers and there were further encouraging signs when they beat Limerick in Thurles, with Paul Ryan on fire against the Treaty men..
But Waterford ended their campaign at the All-Ireland quarter-final stage and Cunningham spent the winter months on an exhaustive trawl of the capital in search of fresh talent.
The League campaign began in demoralising fashion with a big defeat against Tipp but Dublin recovered and won three games to comfortably avoid relegation.
They were excellent against Galway, Waterford and Cork but Limerick travelled to Parnell Park and beat them at the quarter-final stage.
On paper, Dublin face an eminently winnable fixture against Wexford in the Leinster quarter-final but Kilkenny is the dubious reward for the winners.
Cunningham might have to face the prospect of an early provincial exit and steel his side for another march through the qualifiers.
Wexford:
The pressure is really building on Wexford manager Liam Dunne – and the season-ending cruciate knee ligament injury suffered by influential defender Andrew Shore hasn’t helped their cause as they look forward to the Dublin opener.
Wexford didn’t figure in the promotion race from Division 1B of the Allianz League but they were quite competitive in defeat to Waterford in the quarter-final of the competition.
A look at Wexford’s form-line throughout the Allianz League campaign doesn’t provide much comfort for Model County fans, however.
They walloped Kerry but lost to Clare, Limerick and troubled Offaly, before concluding the group stages with a narrow victory over Laois.
No disrespect to Laois and Offaly but if Wexford harbour genuine ambitions of defeating Dublin and having a proper crack at Kilkenny, they need to be seeing off teams of that calibre with greater ease.
Losing by just a point to Waterford, however, should fuel Wexford with some belief that they can gain a positive result against the Dubs.
Once again, Jack Guiney won’t on board to aid the Wexford attack and they’ll be reliant on the likes of Ian Byrne, Conor McDonald and Lee Chin.
Wexford contested All-Ireland U21 finals in 2014 and 2015 and while they lost both, winning three-in-a-row in Leinster indicates that there is talent coming through.
Wexford’s U21s scored one of the goals of the season in 2015, when Cathal Dunbar finished a brilliant move against Offaly, but cameo moments of that nature have been few and far between for Wexford in recent season at senior level.
Another disappointing summer campaign for the Slaneysiders could signal the end of the road for Dunne as manager.
Galway:
If Liam Dunne is under pressure in Wexford, Micheál Donoghue is another man feeling the heat with Galway.
The Tribes boss was the popular choice to succeed Anthony Cunningham last year but his first League season at the helm culminated in relegation from Division 1A of the Allianz League.
Donoghue is well aware that a section of the Galway support wants him and his players to fail, given the treatment dished out to Cunningham after last year’s All-Ireland final.
Player power prevailed in Galway and while Cunningham expressed a desire to continue, once it became apparent that the players didn’t want him, there was just one inevitable outcome.
Galway, on any given day, are capable of catching fire but the Jekyll and Hyde nature of their performances must be infuriating for their loyal fans.
Look at how good they were against Dublin in the Leinster championship replay last year but they were subsequently abject in the provincial final loss to Kilkenny, despite Joe Canning’s wonder-goal.
There’s still a huge responsibility on Canning’s shoulders from an attacking viewpoint but Cathal Mannion, Jason Flynn and Conor Whelan helped to ease the burden last year.
Johnny Glynn won’t feature for the Tribesmen, however, after he lined out for the New York footballers against Roscommon recently.
And Galway still need to nail down long-term options at full and centre back, with the suspicion remaining that the spine of their team still isn’t good enough to challenge for that elusive All-Ireland crown.
Galway haven’t lifted the Liam MacCarthy Cup since 1988, when Conor Hayes was captain, but they have a favourable route to the Leinster final, on the opposite side of the draw to Dublin, Wexford and Kilkenny.
They’ll make the final but with last year’s Leinster and All-Ireland final conquerors Kilkenny likely to provide the opposition again, it’s another tall order for Galway in the Eastern province.
Laois:
In a real quirk in the Leinster championship system, Laois will meet the round-robin runners-up, with the winners of the four-team group given the harder task of facing Galway.
The O'Moore County will fancy their chances of seeing off whoever comes second in the round-robin pool and their likely Leinster semi-final opponents then will be Galway.
But Laois getting to the semi-finals of the Leinster championship is no foregone conclusion.
After putting it up to Galway two years ago, hopes were high that they could produce another big display against the Tribesmen last year but they were demolished.
Laois boss Seamus ‘Cheddar’ Plunkett is a meticulous planner and he has top class back up, with former Tipperary goalkeeper Brendan Cummins, Waterford’s Páraic Fanning, Limerick’s Ger Cunningham and local man Seamus Dwyer in his backroom team.
But the sad reality for Laois is that they don’t have enough quality players at their disposal to compete meaningfully at this level.
Despite home advantage, they were well beaten by a Dublin side reeling from their Galway mauling last year, when the formbook suggested that it should have been a much closer affair.
The Division 1B League campaign was a tortuous one for Laois in 2016, as they lost all five group games.
They also lost to Kerry in a play-off, as the Kingdom beat them for the second time this year, but the midlanders still managed to retain 1B status by defeating Westmeath.
Many will argue that they should have been relegated after losing six games on the spin but such are the vagaries of the League system, Westmeath won Division 2A but still remain in the same group next year.
PJ Scully, Charles Dwyer, Stephen ‘Picky’ Maher and Willie Hyland are capable hurlers but losing Zane Keenan, who has opted out, is a blow.
Kilkenny:
You can count on one hand the amount of Leinster championship defeats suffered by Kilkenny since 1998.
They’ve been crowned provincial kings in 15 of the last 18 seasons – and victory this summer would secure three-in-a-row for the Cats.
Wexford (2004), Galway (2012) and Dublin (2013) are the only teams to inflict defeats on Kilkenny in that time, a quite remarkable achievement.
It’s not surprising, then, that the bookies have Kilkenny at 8-13 to win Leinster again, with Galway their nearest challengers, and likely final opponents, available at 7-4.
Another Galway-Kilkenny clash would certainly be something to look forward to but Galway will need to show vast improvement if they’re to trouble the Noresiders.
But Kilkenny’s would-be challengers in Leinster and beyond will have been heartened by their collapse against Clare in the Allianz Hurling League semi-final.
The Banner men got in for four goals to expose a soft centre at the heart of the Kilkenny defence that’s rarely seen.
Whenever Kilkenny have lost championship games in the Brian Cody era, they’ve been troubled by raw pace and teams that have shown an adventurous approach.
Clare caused them all sorts of problems in that League clash and Cody will miss the attacking prowess of Ger Aylward, one of the real bolters of championship 2015, and Richie Power.
Aylward is sadly ruled out with serious knee ligament damage and Power, who’s been troubled by injury in recent years, pulled the curtain down on his glittering intercounty career.
James Maher would have been an excellent candidate to claim a starting place after showing good League form but he’s out too after he was injured in a farmyard accident.
How long can Kilkenny keep relying on the likes of Richie Hogan, TJ Reid and Eoin Larkin to pull them out of trouble?
As things stand, they’re good enough to win Leinster again but the All-Ireland is a different story.
