Enda McEvoy: Damning Dublin with more faint praise. For now... 

After all of which, Kilkenny will have a tad more in the way of craft and nous when it comes to the clutch moments. And that will suffice. Because when this pair meet, that’s how it usually goes.

Simple and almost heroically obvious, huh? Nothing there that couldn’t be seen coming a mile off. You too can be a hurling columnist.

No apologies for damning the challengers with faint praise, mind. That’s the way it’ll be until Dublin win a Leinster title or reach the last four in the All-Ireland series again.

But here’s a thought. They may be a little better than we’ve been giving them credit for. And for that reason Kilkenny – a team unable to beat Carlow – may be a little more vulnerable than our expectations of Dublin/Kilkenny encounters incline us to believe.

A careful reading of the formbook offers encouragement. The notable feature of Micheál Donoghue’s charges’ activities in the round robin was their consistency of performance. It had a pleasing evenness about it, with a higher ceiling than usual and a higher floor than usual.

Look at their output vis a vis that of this evening’s opponents. Dublin drew with Wexford; Kilkenny beat the latter by one. Dublin beat Galway by six; Kilkenny drew with them. Dublin beat Carlow by five; Kilkenny didn’t beat them at all.

Both counties did a job on Antrim, albeit a pedant might make a case for Dublin’s victory being the worthier on the basis that Antrim targeted their trip to Parnell Park in a way they didn’t target their trip to Nowlan Park.

When the sides met in Donnycarney three weeks ago Kilkenny needed a late goal to win by two points. It didn’t look a hectic performance at the time. It looks rather more substantial now, a compliment to both teams.

Nor was it that Dublin prospered in Salthill because the hosts failed to show. Even taking the wind into account Galway’s first-half tally of 0-19 was a handsome return. David Burke’s dismissal may not have turned the game but it did affect it.

A minor item of note. The visitors landed the opening score within 20 seconds and the first score immediately after the restart within ten seconds. Only a small thing, but the small things tend to matter and in this instance they bespoke a bunch brimming with focus. Time and again this summer Donoghue has sent them out in the requisite frame of mind to do the requisite job. Time and again they’ve responded.

To his abrasiveness Chris Crummey has added the long-range accuracy of a Diarmaid Byrnes or a Diarmuid Ryan. Brian Hayes provides pace in midfield. Best of all, in Donal Burke they possess one of those priceless diamonds, a wing-forward who can plant his feet and pick off a point from 50 metres.

That there has been something less ponderous, more loose limbed than normal about Dublin has helped conduce to what’s been a splendid provincial competition, if in a necessarily quieter key than its southern counterpart, and one for the Leinster Council to take far greater satisfaction in than the travesty known as their senior football championship.

The closing day of the round robin entailed what were two semi-finals in everything but name plus a relegation death match, all of which produced fantastic entertainment. Can’t ask for much more.

The Kilkenny of 1998-2003 won six provincial titles in a row. Okay. The Kilkenny of 2005-11 did seven in a row. Fair enough. The Kilkenny of 2020-24 to do five in a row? Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Honesty of effort is never to be dismissed, however.

Despite the doubts about John Donnelly, who struck 0-7 from play in Parnell Park, they may be hitting their straps at the right time. That laughable non-penalty notwithstanding, they had altogether too much for Wexford in the second half. Paddy Deegan, Eoin Cody and Adrian Mullen are all a fortnight nearer full fitness.

Dublin to hurl really well and Kilkenny to do them on the winning post? Sure. Which is kind of where we came in.

The more consequential event on the clár in Croke Park is the undercard. It is no insult to Laois to aver that Offaly will have more to offer the Leinster Championship over the next five, probably the next ten, years. What’s more, being Offaly you just know they’ll extract every drop of juice from this new generation as they did with the 1980s drop, Adrian Cahill aside.

The county’s springtime form, having taken place in a higher division, was by definition better than Laois’s, a tempering process that along with the momentum from last Saturday’s glorious hullabaloo should stand to them today. But who knows? Sometimes all politics is local.

Banner folk have been here before. Same opponents, same venue, same backdrop. July 9th 1995. The day Birnam Wood finally got up and walked. Tony Considine got to show off his impressive vocal prowess and Clare was full of lovely roses.

The difference between then and now was, obviously, the team’s scope for improvement. Considerable then, limited now.

Considerable then because they’d failed to turn up in the Munster finals of both 1993 and ’94. In 1993 there’d been a small shower on the Ennis Road a couple of hours before the throw-in, a sight Brian Lohan found himself silently welcoming, knowing in his heart of hearts that the slower the pace, the better for Clare.

In ’95 they were wiser, more hardened and just downright better, and in any case they were now under a man who refused to let them believe that anything bar victory was an option. And Lohan no longer cared about the state of the pitch. The harder the better, in fact.

(As an aside, Ger Loughnane, who in his younger days admired Bill Shankly, and Jurgen Klopp. The points of similarity, the messianic stuff included. Discuss.) In 2022 and ’23, on the other hand, Clare very much did turn up. How does a team improve on a 9 out of 10 performance, as in two years ago, or even a – shall we say – 8 out of 10 performance, as in 12 months ago?

Greater clear-mindedness in the endgame is a non-negotiable. Twelve months ago they trailed by the minimum after 66 minutes. What followed was three points, two wides, one chance dropped short to Nickie Quaid and a slack puckout that led to a Limerick point. Not a catalogue of squandermania but, in a situation where every shaft counted, not good enough either.

Another defeat won’t constitute some lurid of indictment of Lohan’s team as players or individuals. It won’t mean they weren’t fed to the teeth of it or didn’t care enough. It will merely mean that yet again they had the misfortune to run into a better team – and Limerick have spent the past five years being a better team than everyone else, 2019 included.

Is it the geography of the thing, the viscerality of the rivalry, that helps Clare keep getting closer than anyone? Over the course of the last two finals an aggregate of two scores separated the combatants after 160 minutes plus injury time. Neither Cork nor Tipp would have come within an ass’s roar of it.

Five-star showings from David Fitzgerald, TK when introduced and Shane O’Donnell and they win. Five-star showings from only one of them and it ain’t happening.

The challengers have only a puck of a ball to make up. It is no giant leap for Homo Dalcassianus in the way that 1995 was. Do the basic housekeeping a little better and try not to overthink the closing minutes.

Yet do not neglect the possibility of a scenario which entails Limerick, having had enough of being put to the pin of their collar by the neighbours on the big day, taking the field intent on making a statement and succeeding to the tune of six or seven points. Certainly the ferocity of their tackling against Waterford bespoke an outfit in their first or second year on the road, not an outfit in their seventh.

Cathal O’Neill has stood out not because he’s come in and done his bit on a successful proposition, circumstances in which anyone can look good temporarily, but because he’s done more than his bit. He’s also a more natural pointscorer at this stage of his career than most of the champions’ forwards were before Paul Kinnerk got his mitts on them.

No signs of slippage. No loss of hunger. Limerick remain Limerick. That’ll do.