Because somebody else lifting the McCarthy Cup would be A Good Thing for the game. Because Cork have enough as it is. Because it's rising eight years since a county that wasn't one or other of the Big Two, or Tipperary, won the All Ireland.

Because the sport needs a new name at the top. And any other cliche you're having yourself.

Cork failing to bring off the threein-a-row: that'll certainly cure hurling's ills at one fell swoop, won't it?

Yeah, right. "And coming after the break, famine is abolished, Met Eireann predict blue skies until 2050 and Fermanagh celebrate their very first All Ireland senior hurling title. . ."

Being serious about it, why should a third successive McCarthy Cup, assuming they wouldn't misuse it as a trojan horse for pay-for-play, be too much for an awesomely single-minded band of brothers who've turned the game upside down with their thinking man's hurling? Would a second triumph as manager be anything less than a fitting reward for a decent, unassuming man like John Allen?

Exactly how many All Ireland medals would be too many All Ireland medals for Sean Og O hAilpin? And where counties who plot and plan and yearn and burn to win All Irelands are concerned, counties like Cork and Kilkenny, who is anyone . . . other than those who outwit and outhurl them on the field of play . . . to set a boundary to their march?

To return, not for the first time, to a point made here in the past. Instead of pointing the finger at these guys for being too ambitious, we should be pointing the finger at the other guys for not being ambitious enough. The germane question this and any other weekend is not about which of the likely counties will be flaunting the silverware at Croke Park on 3 September, it's about how many of the unlikely counties harbour individuals willing to see things as they never were and ask why not. While closed shops do become unhealthy without a regular blast of fresh air, wishful thinking by itself does not fumigate them.

It can be done. Events of the past fortnight alone . . . Dublin's All Ireland colleges triumph, Carlow's minor victory against Wexford . . . prove that.

What it cannot be done without is vision, celestial fire and the determination to put in the hard yards.

Colm Mac Sealaigh reckons it took the Dublin colleges' set-up fully five years to learn the ropes in Leinster.

But they kept at it. How many other Colm Mac Sealaighs are out there?

By establishing the Tier 2 and Tier 3 championships, Sean Kelly's Hurling Development Committee lit a candle for the aspiring and the dispossessed, an innovation that may serve as the former president's most enduring legacy. The new HDC must quickly come to grips with a less high-flown but no less pressing challenge, that of concertinaing the championship time frame. The first-round cut no longer being the deepest, it's the height of nonsense for a provincial competition that starts today to not finish until the end of June. Let the 2007 championship begin in early June and finish in late August. This too can be achieved.

Portumna demonstrated how to finish a team that employs a running game. Be sufficiently fast and fit, get the hurley in, try and build up a lead, then defend it by flooding midfield and clearing space up front for your best and fastest forwards. With an extra layer of protection facing them, let's see then how much room Tom and Jerry find to make those runs.

Still, we know that Cork will hurl from memory and that, irrespective of how painfully a majority of the forwards may toil on a given day, the defence will keep them in it. Nor should it be forgotten how full of horse the champions were in beating Galway last September, hitting 1-21 without being required to go through the gears.

Their Munster semi-final date with Clare in a fortnight's time is the one game that truly matters between now and late July. Clare's success rate in league and championship these past 15 months amounts to 75 per cent, superior to Cork's 66 per cent and second only to Kilkenny's 85 per cent.

Anthony Daly has installed the framework and coaxed the consistency. It's the biggest possible tribute to him to assert that Clare are potential champions again.

The disquiet over the showings of Seanie McMahon and the newly honeymooned Brian Lohan in the league semi-final notwithstanding, only a brave man would insist that age has finally withered their old hands. Yet despite all their big, athletic forwards, or perhaps because of all their big, athletic forwards, four years have passed since Clare shaded a tight championship fixture through the medium of a goal against the run of play. Unlike Galway and Kilkenny, they're not blessed with a single forward who can spin straw into gold.

Galway wouldn't have to improve by much, apart from eradicating silly mistakes in defence, to go a step further than last year. The same recipe will apply: win the All Ireland quarter-final and take it from there. Thing is, we know Clare have a hardcore who'll both die and kill for the cause.

Can't be so sure about their neighbours to the north.

The crowd in black and amber look a more secure bet. As if . . . and not before time . . . concluding that the term "Kilkenny coach" should mean more than merely a long white vehicle supplied by Kavanaghs of Urlingford, Brian Cody has had the gumption to rip it up and start again.

Kilkenny are back playing hurling, their half-back line and midfield an unaccustomed hive of raised heads, handpasses and diagonal deliveries.

Lack of pace in defence remains their gravest obstacle.

But Kilkenny . . . and Galway . . . have options. Cork demonstrably don't.

As against that, forwards win matches whereas defenders win championships. Again, run with whichever cliche makes you feel good.

The vagaries of the draw apart, there's no overriding reason why the All Ireland semi-final line-up shouldn't replicate last year's. Limerick, who've learned to punch their weight and whose performances won't fall below a certain level, are the most obvious threat to the status quo.

Waterford's boat has sailed, its departure perversely coinciding with the catalyst for their most shining hour, the dismissal of John Mullane in the 2004 Munster final. Heartening though their progress has been, Offaly are armed with cap guns in a world of heavy ordnance. One despairs at Wexford's present and one despairs all the more at the prospect of their future.

Ten years have passed since 1996.

Was it for this, etc.

Tipp? After stoutly championing for many moons the increasingly unfashionable notion that Tipperary weren't lucky to win the 2001 All Ireland but rather were a team who rode their luck in doing so . . . and yes, there isa difference . . . the Tribune is on the point of breaking out the sackcloth and ashes. There is no other way of putting it than to hold that Tipperary have been a deep disappointment in the meantime. What could have proved to be the alpha for many of them, as it so splendidly has for Eoin Kelly, has instead emerged as their omega. At the risk of sounding like our old pal John Doyle, let's see them going down with the ship this time.

Naturally John might just phrase it a little more earthily.

Elsewhere, Antrim's early exploits in Division One of the league make them a blot on the handicap in the Christy Ring Cup. Keep an eye out for Armagh, the Division 3 champions, in the Nicky Rackard Cup. Feel free to call us unduly cynical for asserting we won't be lumping the SSIA on an accumulator that entails Babs, Justin and Dinny Cahill all being in their current jobs come summer's end.

And three small guys we're looking forward to seeing in action: Donie Ryan, Limerick's bristling bundle of hyperactivity; Wexford's Des Mythen, a smashing, feather-footed wing-forward permanently alive to the potential of the cross-field ball; and Master T Walsh, less for what he can do than for what, a la Liam Dunne 10 years ago, he doesn't do.

Which brings us back to where, more or less, we began. Galway with a chance. Clare with a bigger chance.

But, given that the first fact of intercounty hurling life is that the house always wins in the long run, one or other of the two usuallest suspects to carry off the cup in September. There is not even the sniff of a Keyser Soze out there to floor them or the audience in the final reel. Sorry for being predictable.

Not as predictable, mind you, as the suspicion that the opening two paragraphs of this piece will be wilfully and gloriously misconstrued from now til September ends.

'TRIBUNE' PREDICTIONS

ENDA McEVOY Leinster Kilkenny Munster Clare Ulster Antrim All Ireland semi-finalists Clare, Cork, Galway and Kilkenny All Ireland Cork Player of the Year Tom Kenny (Cork) LIAM GRIFFIN Leinster Kilkenny Munster Cork Ulster Antrim All Ireland semi-finalists Cork, Galway, Kilkenny and Limerick All Ireland Cork Player of the Year Tommy Walsh (Kilkenny) KIERAN SHANNON Leinster Kilkenny Munster Clare Ulster Antrim All Ireland semi-finalists Clare, Cork, Kilkenny and Limerick All Ireland Kilkenny Player of the Year Henry Sheffiin (Kilkenny) MALACHY CLERKIN Leinster Kilkenny Munster Cork Ulster Down All Ireland semi-finalists Clare, Cork, Galway and Kilkenny All Ireland Clare Player of the Year Seanie McMahon (Clare) STARS IN OUR EYES FOUR YOUNG

PLAYERS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN THIS YEAR'S HURLING CHAMPIONSHIP

JOE BERGIN OFFALY Made the beginnings of a name for himself when bagging two goals in the win over Waterford that propelled John McIntyre's side into the NHL quarter-"nal, where he didn't let himself down by hitting two points against Tipperary. Big and necessarily raw, but blessed with huge self-belief for a teenager and is already a voice in the dressing room. Anxious to improve; is always asking for the videos of Offaly games in order to see what he did wrong. Of late he's been doing very little wrong. A nephew of the Troys, so great breeding.

CATHAL NAUGHTON CORK The one new face who might make an impression for the All Ireland champions.

Pace to burn and was a beacon in the darkness for Newtownshandrum at Croke Park on 17 March with two sparkling early points against Portumna. Called up for Cork's two remaining league encounters, he landed a point against Wexford after coming on as a sub and another three when starting against Clare. Barring an injury crisis, won't make the starting 15 in the Munster semi-"nal, but could well end up vying with Neil Ronan for the title of Cork's optimum impact sub.

MICHAEL RICE KILKENNY Like Naughton, made the Tribune's 2010 All Star team here last Christmas. At wingback, as it happened, though it was at lefthalf forward he began the year against Laois, scoring three points from play.

Was Kilkenny's most consistent performer until illness kept him out of the closing stages of the competition. His team's change of style demands players who can direct thoughtful low ball to the corners; there isn't a man on Noreside better at doing so than Rice. Slight danger that his sheer versatility will hamper his chances of nailing down a place of his own.

WILLIE RYAN TIPPERARY While he starts on the bench at Semple Stadium today, here's a player you're likely to hear more of before the summer is out . . . not that it looked that way up to a fortnight ago, so recent was his call to inter-county arms. Waterford IT's three-goal hero in the Fitzgibbon Cup "nal, where it's safe to assume he made an impression on the UCD manager, one B Keating. Great stickwork and striking and is a born "nisher, as he demonstrated when blocking down the opposition goalkeeper for the crucial goal for Toomevara in the Munster club "nal against Mount Sion two years ago.