FIXTURES
Saturday 3 February
Division 1 Group B
Galway v Westmeath, Pearse Stadium, 2pm
Dublin v Tipperary, Parnell Park, 2.30pm
Division 3A
Sligo v Cavan, Markievicz Park, 2pm
Division 3B
Lancashire v Longford, Abbotstown Centre of Excellence, 1pm
Warwickshire v Leitrim, Páirc Na hÉireann, 2pm
Sunday 4 February
Division 1 Group A
Clare v Cork, Cusack Park, 1.45pm
Kilkenny v Wexford, UPMC Nowlan Park, 1.45pm
Offaly v Waterford, Glenisk O'Connor Park, 2pm
Division 1 Group B
Limerick v Antrim, FBD Semple Stadium, 2pm
Division 2A
Kerry v Carlow, Austin Stack Park, 1pm
Laois v Down, Laois Hire O'Moore Park, 2pm
Meath v Kildare, Páirc Tailteann, 2pm
Division 2B
Roscommon v London, Athleague, 12.30pm
Derry v Tyrone, Celtic Park, 1.30pm
Wicklow v Donegal, Echelon Park, 2pm
Division 3A
Louth v Monaghan, Darver, 2pm
Mayo v Armagh, MacHale Park, 2pm
ONLINE
Live blogs each day on RTÉ Sport Online and the RTÉ News app.
RADIO
Live commentaries and updates from around the grounds on RTÉ Radio 1's Saturday and Sunday Sport.
TV
TG4 will broadcast live coverage of Dublin v Tipperary (Sat, 2.30pm) and Clare v Cork (Sun, 1.45pm).
Highlights and reaction to all the weekend's action on Allianz League Sunday, RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, 9.30pm.
WEATHER
Saturday: It will be mostly cloudy for many with scattered outbreaks of rain and drizzle. Some mist and hill and coastal fog too. It'll be mostly dry though in Ulster and north Connacht, with some bright spells likely and just a few isolated light showers. Highest temperatures of 9-12C in mostly light to moderate westerly winds.
Sunday: Cloudy for a time with rain and drizzle, becoming mostly confined to Ulster into the afternoon, where it'll be persistent in parts. Drier and becoming a little brighter elsewhere with some sunny spells, the best chance across Munster and south Leinster. Highest temperatures of 10 to 13 degrees in moderate to fresh and occasionally gusty southwest winds.
For more, visit met.ie.
A transitional league
After four seasons of low-stakes puckabouts, the 2020-24 Allianz Hurling League format has been consigned to the rubbish heap. It will not be missed.
From the moment the format was unveiled in late 2019, it was quite obviously a recipe for ennui and stagnation.
A rare example of a sporting association consciously watering down a long-established product, it was done at the behest of inter-county managers who found its predecessor (2014-19) a bit too intense and attritional for the early spring.
That format - a six-team 1A, with a relegation play-off for the bottom two - was certainly high on jeopardy, perhaps unnecessarily so. Though quite how much of a penalty relegation was under the old format is open to question, given that both Galway (2017) and Limerick (2018) won the All-Ireland having spent the early part of the year in 1B. Despite this, there was still the strong perception that demotion from 1A was something to be avoided.
Their solution was to devise a format where relegation was a practical impossibility for the top-tier Liam MacCarthy teams. Combined with the increasingly demanding 'league-based' championship structure, this rendered the actual league an irrelevance.
This reached its height in 2022 when league placing turned out to be an exact negative predictor of championship performance (almost every team who fared well in the league imploded in summer; any teams who sacked it off prospered).
One had to spare a thought for the hurling analyst/ podcaster community in this environment who had to offer their 'verdicts', while acknowledging at regular intervals that none of it counted for much and you couldn't be reading anything into it. An invidious position.
The 2024 edition is a kind of 'transitional' league campaign, of the kind they used to have in football on the regular back in the 1990s and which they still occasionally have in hurling. One which acts as a bridge between one format and another.
Since the football crowd decided back in 2008 that they were done with all the 1As and 2Bs and settled on four divisions of eight arranged in order of quality, they've had no call for them. Hurling, with its small coterie of elite counties and lack of 'middle class', is still tinkering.
From 2025, we are moving to a seven-team top tier, based on performance rather than randomised. The second tier will have no link with it other than promotion/relegation. Despite this, they are retaining the old '1A' and '1B' nomenclature, presumably for the sake of the latter's self esteem.
To get there, in 2024, the top three teams in 1A and 1B will be placed in 1A for 2025, along with the better performing fourth-placed team. The bottom five will be tipped into 1B, along with top teams from this year's 2A.
Group A - Clare host Cork, Rossiter reign begins in Kilkenny
Though the All-Ireland champions are in the other group, the new arrangement has worked out a little harder on the Group A teams.
Johnny Kelly's Offaly, back in Division 1 after beating Kildare in last year's second tier final, are on a hiding to nothing against the Munster trio of Cork, Clare and Waterford and their one-time Leinster SHC peers Kilkenny and Wexford.
They host Davy Fitzgerald's Waterford in Tullamore on the opening weekend. After a difficult first year back in charge in 2023, which did at least conclude with a rousing win over Tipperary, Fitzgerald has been hit with high profile opt-opts for his second season. 2016 Hurler of the Year Austin Gleeson is most prominent among them, taking a season to 're-charge'. Conor Gleeson and Shane McNulty have also made themselves unavailable.
Keith Rossiter's reign in Wexford began with a Walsh Cup triumph, though they won't have been dining out on that very long. Their strong record against Kilkenny in the past half-decade has been hard to fathom, given it has otherwise been a very chequered period.
Darragh Egan's stint in charge ended with a loss to Westmeath, and then an emotional victory over Kilkenny which staved off relegation. Lee Chin picked up a knock in the Walsh Cup win over Galway but saw out the game, while Rossiter has been chopping and changing his goalies.
They visit a Kilkenny side who lost Richie Hogan and Padraig Walsh to retirement in the off-season. TJ Reid, one of a dwindling band of Cats players to hold All-Ireland medals, is clinging on however. Though, at 36, his time may be rationed heavily in the league.
Unquestionably, the premier event of the opening round of the hurling league is the Clare-Cork showdown in Ennis.
Based on results, few teams have taken the league less seriously in the past couple of years than Brian Lohan's Clare. This threw people off the scent back in the naive days of spring 2022 but didn't so much last year, where they exploded into life come the Munster championship. This year, they've been hit with the absence of Tony Kelly, who underwent ankle surgery before Christmas and is in a race to be back fit for the start of the Munster championship.
Cork, desperately unlucky, not to progress beyond Munster in 2023, are most in need of silverware, according to RTÉ analyst Jackie Tyrrell.
Now officially in their longest ever All-Ireland drought, Cork's underage system does strongly hint of better days ahead. Last year, they picked up their third All-Ireland Under-20 title in four years against neutrals' favourites, Offaly (a third in three years if you consider they won the 2020 title in summer '21).
Ben Cunningham and Eoin Downey are expected to be more prominent figures in this year's league, while Pat Ryan confirmed that wing-back Micheál Mullins had also been drafted in from the U20 winning team.
The manager confirmed that Declan Dalton would miss the league with a metatarsal injury.
Group B: Tipp hungry, Limerick 'not sharp'
Liam Cahill cut a morose figure after Tipperary's quarter-final exit to Galway, all the promise of their early season form having fizzled away horribly in mid-summer.
In his second season, the manager insisted that Tipp "need silverware", first referencing the Munster championship but then adding "if we find ourselves in the closing stages of the league, we'll go after that as well."
He confirmed that they'd have 80% of their squad available for the trip to Parnell Park, but Conor Stakelum and Cathal Barrett are recovering from injury, while Noel McGrath and Seamus Kennedy are expected to be rested.
For Dublin, the availability of scorer-in-chief Donal Burke is in question, though Micheál Donoghue said he'd recovered from the injury which kept him out of Na Fianna's historic run. Eoghan O'Donnell was also forced off injured in their Walsh Cup semi-final loss to Galway.
As usual, the turnover of players in Dublin hurling has been extensive, Cian Boland, Chris O'Leary, Andrew Dunphy and Aidan Mellett all opting out for the year. Chris Crummey's involvement is uncertain.
The pool is deep, though it needs to be. Diarmuid O Dulaing, in particular, impressed during their Walsh Cup outings.
John Kiely lamented the weather-enforced cancellation of the Munster Hurling League match with Cork and said his team were "not sharp".
Needless to say, the rest of the hurling community haven't exactly been tumbling over each other to offer their concern and support.
They face Antrim in week 1, who have been a highly competitive presence in the league in recent years. That clash takes place at FBD Semple Stadium, with the pitch at the Gaelic Grounds undergoing repair work.
Occasionally tipped as one of the more likely contenders to join the elite in the medium-to-long term, Antrim have been hit with several withdrawals this year, notably the Dunloy quartet of Eoin O'Neill, Ryan Elliott, Seaan Elliott and Keelan Molloy, who are travelling.
Stalwart Neil McManus retired in the wake of last season, his final game the victory over Westmeath in Mullingar which sealed their place in Liam MacCarthy for 2024.
Galway, with Henry Shefflin still in situ for a third campaign, host Westmeath on Saturday afternoon.
The Thomas' crew may get a rest in the early weeks, and it's a chance for Shefflin to trial the younger brigade - Declan McLoughlin, Gavin Lee, Liam Collins - against Joe Fortune's outfit, who despite their landmark win over Wexford last summer, find themselves back in the Joe McDonagh.
Tralee takes centre stage in 2A
Joe McDonagh champions Carlow limber up for their tilt at the Leinster SHC with a run in Division 2A, probably not ideal preparation.
Their opening fixture is one of the trickier ones, away to Kerry in Tralee. The Kingdom have retained the services of ex-Waterford player Stephen Molumphy as manager, despite an underwhelming 2023 season, which saw them fail to reach the Joe Mc decider for the first time this decade.
Long-time Davy Fitz sidekick Seoirse Bulfin guided Meath to Division 2B and Christy Ring success last year and they host Kildare on Sunday.
The visitors, now under the management of Kilkenny's two-time All-Ireland winning camogie manager Brian Dowling, reached the Division 2A final last year, lost out to Offaly and then endured a horrible Joe Mc campaign.
Willie Maher has lost Dan Shanahan to the Waterford U20s, adding his fellow Tipp man Brian Horgan to the Laois backroom team. They missed out on the Joe McDonagh Cup final, in somewhat sickening circumstances, a previously dominant Offaly phoning it in for the final round against Carlow, which left Maher highly aggrieved. They host Down, who narrowly avoided relegation in both league and championship last year.
Watch Mayo v Dublin in the Allianz Football League on Saturday from 7.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to updates on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
Watch highlights on Allianz League Sunday on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player from 9.30pm, follow a live blog every Sunday afternoon on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to live updates on Sunday Sport
