OPINION: Limerick and Clare have been the best teams in 2023 - Shane Dowling

IN a little over three weeks from now, the All-Ireland senior hurling championship will all be over. I won't say it's hard to believe, but it's mad how quickly the season comes and goes.

And no matter who you meet, or who you speak to, you won't find one person who will tell you they agree with the format of how a hurling season runs. I have to say, it's actually not a million miles from being perfect.

I think a couple of small little tweaks and it would be spot on. You could reduce the Allianz League a small bit, give an extra week between some of the round robin fixtures and maybe finish it up in the second week of August.

I would get rid of the pre-League competitions anyway for starters. No need for them. And there has to be a substantial prize at the end of the League to ensure teams go at it properly because this year's league was a holy show.

I know if I was head of marketing for Allianz what phone call or e-mail I would be making or sending over the next few months. And can you imagine if Limerick didn’t make it out of Munster on the back of what happened Waterford in last year's campaign after winning the league, it would be worse then a disaster!

Of course the League is, and always will be, a secondary competition - that is never going to change - but it has to get some meaning back. While all the talk is about the hurling championship, I think I would love to try and sort out the League, and get it back to where it was.

Saying all that, there was 20,000 in Cork for the first round game with Limerick and nearly 15,000 the night we played Clare in the TUS Gaelic Grounds, and we all remember how boring that game was.

But of course Brian Lohan and his crew were timing themselves for a run at one thing only. Waterford used that league for a training purpose, didn’t make it out of Munster, while Tipp who went hard in the league, limped out of the All-Ireland series at the quarter-final stage last weekend.

Sometimes I believe people make up their own agendas to things. If you go out and try and win the League, while still introducing some new blood, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Yes, there should be a three-week gap to championship, I would like to see that.

But look at Cork in the League semi-final against Kilkenny, boy, they were woeful and didn’t make it out of Munster. I just think it needs to be looked at in an overall context and try and get teams to buy into it a little bit more. Anyway that’s a conversation for another day, but just some food for thought on that.

Clare - it is my belief and has been for awhile now - that it is going to be a Limerick v Clare All-Ireland hurling final this year. A first ever. I'm not getting ahead of myself now or anything but I can see it. They have with no exceptions been the best two teams in this year's championship to date.

Last weekend for their All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin, they were missing John Conlon, David McInerney, Aidan McCarthy, and Conor Cleary. Shane O'Donnell went off injured. Imagine Limerick losing Declan Hannon, Sean Finn, Will O'Donoghue and Tom Morrissey. Same equivalent, roughly in those positions. And still to hammer Dublin.

Ok, Dublin were very poor, but still. I would expect them to raise a massive gallop against Kilkenny, but they will need those players all back. If they have a full panel to pick them, they will win.

Tony Kelly knows surely at this stage they Mikey Butler will follow him around every blade of grass at Croke Park on Sunday week. That's ideal if I'm Brian Lohan.

‘Go back there, Tony and play in the half-back line, and leave an ocean of space for Shane O'Donnell and Ryan Taylor to run riot.’

They tried to lump ball down on top of Peter Duggan last year and Huw Lawlor ate everything that came their way. So you'd have no doubt they will have learnt for their upcoming All-Ireland semi-final.

I think Galway were steely - that's the word I would use - against Tipperary at the TUS Gaelic Grounds on Saturday night.
It won't go down in the history books as an all time classic, but don’t forget last year's All-Ireland quarter-finals were just as bad, if not worse. And going into the semi-finals nobody gave Galway any chance, or Clare the same.

Galway were lucky to beat Cork last year in the quarter-final, they could have beaten Tipp by 10 points at least. Tipp were poor.

I was a big fan of theirs, I have to say. They have made savage progress this year, and it will be a lot easier job for Liam Cahill and the players this winter to go back training than it was last year. He will have to find new players though and I have no doubt that will be his sole target over the coming months.

Next week, the big match build up!