SEAN MORANlooks at a significant weekend in the league when all counties, apart from Dublin, have something to play for.

THIS WEEKEND’S final series of matches in the Allianz Hurling League Division One is likely to end up with a familiar list of play-off qualifiers: Kilkenny Tipperary and Cork, the counties that have dominated hurling throughout its history.

Recent years have seen the championship played out as a power struggle between Kilkenny and Tipperary, whose meetings in three successive All-Ireland finals constitute a record. In the years since the county’s last All-Ireland in 2005, Cork have become the silent partner in the triumvirate – along the way losing their place at the top of the game’s roll of honour to Kilkenny – commanding more publicity for their off-field battles than those on the pitch.

The more upbeat sentiment on Leeside this season may be partly due to Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s role as Dr Good Vibes in his second coming as manager but it’s also rooted in more substantive considerations such as performances, results and, above all, a pervading realism that the best that can be hoped for this year is improvement.

Tomorrow Cork are off to their favourite venue Semple Stadium, secure in the knowledge a win against Tipperary – who they have faced in each of the last four championships – will leave them in a play-off position. The extra matches will be welcome for Barry-Murphy although like other managers in the new six-team format he hasn’t been able to cast his net terribly wide during the league and will hardly start doing so in knockout matches.

Although the correlation between league success and championship progress has been recently strong in the hurling league, Cork didn’t manage to create much momentum when reaching the final two years ago and throughout history the county hasn’t made a habit of double success. Only once in nearly 60 years have the league and MacCarthy Cup made their way to Cork in the same year – despite the county having won 12 All-Irelands and eight NHL titles during that time. By contrast Kilkenny have achieved the double four times in the past decade alone.

Despite these discouraging precedents Barry-Murphy has reason to remember the role played by the league in reconstituting the Cork challenge in the mid-1990s. His task then as now was to restore confidence to hurling in the county. Having managed Cork to the All-Ireland minor title in 1995, he was fast-tracked into the senior job despite the more agreeable prospect of taking the team as under-21s. “In hindsight I should have,” he says, “but I decided to go with the seniors when the offer came. To an extent I walked in blindfolded and the learning process was hard.”

It was incremental as well as hard. The county was relegated from Division One in Barry-Murphy’s first season, 1995-96, the last of the old split seasons with seven fixtures spread bizarrely from October to March with a two-month break in the middle. A year later they were promoted and 12 months after that, in 1998, had the county’s 14th and most recent win in the competition. Fifteen months later they had won the All-Ireland.

“That was very, very significant,” he recalls of the league triumph against Waterford, “and I would love us to qualify for this year’s final. There’s no doubt that we’ve been taking it seriously. The only regret I have is that there hasn’t been a chance to give more players a run.

“I’ve tried a few but not as many as I would have liked. But the format means that there’s been a siege mentality – having to win the next game – and maybe we could be criticised for that.”

The format also means that all counties apart from Dublin, already booked in for the relegation play-off, have something to play for and for Cork there’s a fair amount on the line.

A win or a draw will see them advance but should they lose to Tipperary and Galway defeat Kilkenny, Cork will almost certainly miss out on a league semi-final, a fate that consigns them to a 12-week hiatus until the Munster semi-final against the winners of Tipperary-Limerick.

The alternative – “getting to establish a first team and some high-intensity training for a league semi-final and maybe final” – is naturally more appealing.