THE week before last, Ger Loughnane reported to the Galway hurling board to give a stateof-the-county address after the end of his side's league campaign. He outlined his concern with the team's ball-winning capacity, especially in the air, and its inability to reach the necessary levels of aggression to play his brand of power hurling. But the way the campaign petered out didn't trouble them. The league didn't matter. Its sole purpose was to build up for the championship.

Loughnane, like all winners, has no choice but to now view it like that, but the inner Loughnane will still take some convincing. In his autobiography, Loughnane pointed out that while winning the league itself isn't crucial, "some games at some times are vital". For Clare in 1995, such a game was the visit of Tipperary.

English, Fox and Cleary were all there, and all left Ennis beaten and bruised.

That day, he detailed, Clare made a statement. "Every team that's going to go places, " he'd write, "needs to make a statement. You can even afford to take a step back after that."

Which now must make him, deep down, wonder . . . before the setback that was Wexford, what statement did Galway make? Against Limerick, when they came back against the wind? Maybe, but every genuine All Ireland contender should be beating Limerick.

The truth is, Galway wanted and needed a good league. A side doesn't reconvene training on 4 November to only reach a league quarter-final; if it's all about championship, then, in the interest of freshness, you don't start back until the new year. Galway, as Loughnane pointed out to the board, have built up their fitness, one of the pillars of confidence, but this side more than anything needed to get back into the groove of winning games. They didn't. Loughnane and his team cannot be underestimated but the reality is they'll enter the 2007 championship having won only three of the 11 games they've played against top-10 opposition since the 2005 All Ireland final. More than that, while their coach might well have been the coach of the last century, he's only won a handful of games in this one. Winning, for both players and manager, is a memory.

It's not like Loughnane's found his starting 15 either. Actually, all the constant chopping and switching probably explains Galway's indifferent league. He used three goalkeepers . . . and now has a fourth in training. Derek Hardiman, an All Star wing-back, played the last three games at full back without ever looking comfortable or convincing. Damien Joyce, who, before Loughnane's appointment, rivalled Eoin and Brian Murphy as the best and most under-rated cornerback in hurling, was dropped after conceding Dublin's match-winning point in Parnell Park and has failed to start another game.

John Lee, at centre-back, has been the one find in the league ("Reminds me of another young number six I worked with, " Loughnane mused after the win in Limerick), but who'll be his Daly and Doyle? He had six different wingmen during the league, with David Collins, the side's captain, dropped after two games, only to re-emerge in Nowlan Park at midfield . . . when he was taken off.

Collins' inclusion that day brought the number of midfielders used in the league up to nine, and while some of those experiments were astute . . . changing Damien Hayes' scenery for a few games was healthy for both player and county . . .

such constant altering was excessive for a sector in which Galway could boast two All Star nominees 18 months ago.

One of those, David Tierney, a confidence player if ever there was one, was taken off after 30 minutes against Limerick, and never started again after the Dublin debacle. Fergal Healy only finished one game in the same spot he started. Ger Farragher, another confidence player and All Star from '05, was played out of position at 11 against Limerick before being taken off at half-time, and then the following week against Dublin, was replaced before the break by Eugene Cloonan. The same day Farragher had been instructed not to take any frees.

Although there was some logic to such a policy . . . Farragher obviously needed to do more from play . . . pointing some frees would surely have given him greater confidence to do that. Instead he played with fear.

The whole panel did. When teenage goalkeeper James Skehill hit two balls over the line in Salthill against Tipperary, he instantly looked over to the sideline to check management's reaction. You can't play like that; nearly every study of peak performance shows that to enter the zone, you must park your ego and play as if no one cares.

The irony is, Loughnane himself has appreciated that. In his autobiography, he cited the lyrics of a country and western song, which he came across reading the NBA coach Pat Riley's 'The Winner Within'. "You've got to sing like you don't need the money/ You've got to love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like there's nobody watching/ You've got to come from the heart if you want it to work." With Galway, they always feel big Ger is watching and that soon they'll be hurt. Even Cody, for all his notorious ruthlessness, allows struggling players to play through their bad patch and finish games. Loughnane didn't. At halftime against Dublin, Loughnane replaced two rookies as well as Farragher with veterans Cloonan, Hayes and Alan Kerins.

If the league was all about seeking the character of players instead of points, then why all those substitutes that day?

The good news is such an issue is resolvable. Loughnane merely neglected an old principle, instead of discarding it. His selector Brendan Lynskey is also aware of it. "The players have so much respect for Ger, " he recently told The Irish Times, "they're almost afraid to express themselves. They're tightening up." He couldn't have articulated the nub of the issue any better, and at a long overdue meeting between players and management after the Wexford defeat, it was addressed. Though Loughnane has up to 42 players in training now, players are being allowed to play and settle into the one spot. The side he'll start the qualifiers with will, bar one or two spots, be the one he'll start the All Ireland quarter-final with.

They face other challenges. Loughnane has identified Galway's weakness in the air as a priority issue and claims to be tackling it in training, but so far his training ground has yet to see the groundto-air ball-propelling machine which Waterford and Dublin . . . two teams who've murdered Galway in the air this past 12 months . . . routinely use.

There's also the leadership issue. The appointment of Collins, at 23, as team captain, would appear further proof Loughnane has taken the Clare template too far.

Collins might prove to be a leader, but he'll hardly ever be the leader of that group, and his league form hinted as much.

Eugene Cloonan's selection as vice-captain is curious too. While the extra responsibility might help curb his petulant streak, it might not either, and he's a player who teammates find it hard not just to play for but play with; his assists rate is hardly in the Corcoran or Comerford mode. Meanwhile, some of the players who called for and instigated change . . . the removal of Hayes and the appointment of Loughnane . . . are treated with suspicion.

In Cork, it was different; Donal O'Grady built his team around Donal Og Cusack and Joe Deane. They devised the most sophisticated and physical preparation hurling has known without a hill or racetrack in sight, and that system sent them on the second longest winning-streak in championship history before Kilkenny ended it last September.

That game might well have ramifications for Galway. After it, Loughnane proclaimed you can have all the professionalism on earth but it can't replace character. It was a porous argument; it was the character of the Cork players which demanded such professionalism.

For Loughnane though, that game confirmed his bias. Kilkenny, not Cork, would be his model, and that model was very like one they once had in Clare.

But maybe, "in your face" as Lynskey puts it, isn't the way for Galway to go, just as it wasn't for Cork (mind, Galway didn't lack aggression against Kilkenny in '01 or '05). Maybe they're a ball-possession instead of a ball-winning team.

Can Loughnane change his ways? The experience of 2000 suggests not but the man is too clever and too ambitious to not.

And his team are still dangerous. The majority of them have national league medals, have played in All Ireland finals . . . in fact, eight of them have played in more senior All Ireland finals than any current player outside Cork and Kilkenny. They've beaten every contending county in either a league final or championship match this past five years.

Loughnane will have learned from the league. But he might need that second year to implement all its lessons.

Q. Can Waterford carve league joy into championship Glory?

THE league is never "just" the league. Not in the new century anyhow. Nicky English sensed it, and after how 2001 panned out for both of them, Brian Cody copped it too. To win an All Ireland you have to put a string of four or five championship wins together. But to achieve that, you first must put such a sequence together in the league.

It doesn't automatically translate into championship form, of course. But go through it. This past six years Kilkenny's league success rate has corresponded with their championship record. Clare, under Anthony Daly, would win two out of every three league games against fellow top-nine counties, and after getting too revved up for the first round in Munster, would settle back into being a 65 per cent championship team and regular All Ireland semi-finalists.

Tipp, under Ken Hogan and now Babs, have reverted back to being a 50 per cent league team, and well, a 50 per cent championship team.

Even Cork sow certain seeds in spring that reap success in summer. In Donal O'Grady's first season, they had a very fine, if unheralded, league while in three of the last four years they've topped their league section. Only twice in the last four years have they lost a league game by more than four points, while only once have they been out-goaled in their 29 league and championship games against top-nine counties since the 2004 Munster final.

In short, statistical trends in the league hold for the championship.

Which is why this could finally be the year Waterford win it all. Prior to this season, Waterford under Justin McCarthy (left) had won only 36 per cent of their league games against the top nine, arch-rivals Cork, meanwhile, had a 54 per cent win-rate. And that gulf was still there in championship.

While both their success rates increased by more than double figures, Waterford under McCarthy were still losing as many championship games against the top nine as they were winning, in contrast to Cork's 77 per cent success rate.

This year, Waterford are hitting the win rate of champions. For only the second time under McCarthy, they managed to go three league games unbeaten against the top nine. The last time they put a sequence like that together was in 2004, a streak that created the confidence and momentum for winning possibly the greatest Munster championship ever. Now, after winning one of the best leagues ever, Waterford are again eying more.

There are other parallels with 2004.

In that sensational Munster championship, they out-goaled all three of their vanquished rivals, but that classic final with Cork was a watershed. Waterford were out-goaled nine times in their next 20 top-nine games. All Irelands are not won like that. This year, though, Waterford were only out-goaled in two of their eight league games (both times, by the way, they lost). They still aren't scoring enough goals . . . in only two of their 25 topnine games since that 2004 Munster final have they out-goaled their opponents, a measly eight per cent rate compared to Kilkenny's 48 per cent . . . but they've stopped leaking them.

Where they were conceding three goals for every one they scored, they've now cut that ratio to 2:1, and last month, down to 1:1. That's what separates league and All Ireland finalists from semi-finalists. Above all, they're out-pointing everyone, scoring either 19 or 20 points in their last four games.

There's flesh and blood behind those numbers. Clinton Hennessy is the first legitimate goalkeeper they've had in a generation. For all the gallant finger-inthe-dyke performances Tom Feeney has given at full back, Declan Prendergast appears their first recognised number three since Sean Cullinane.

McCarthy's persistence is awesome as is his new-found capacity to change. Last August's defeat hurt him like no other since the 1972 All Ireland, and as Benjamin Franklin said, what hurts instructs.

This year he's finally taken the captaincy off the county board and champions and handed it to Michael Walsh, his players are now handed DVDs of their own game and upcoming opponents, while next week they fly off to Portugal for pre-championship camp.

And he's freshened his team up. Kearney, Walsh and Molumphy have infused the side with the kind of boldness which the three Eoins did in 2002, and Bull Phelan and Brick Walsh did in 2004.

With the exception of the current Cork side, every league, Munster and All Ireland champion has needed a few rookies to lift that silverware. Waterford, for all the longevity of their veterans, epitomise the wisdom of that insight.

This past six years there hasn't been a better team to watch than Waterford.

This year there mightn't be a better team, period.

Q. Are the Rebels jaded?

Finished even?

WHATEVER about father time, history is against Cork.

To win another All Ireland, they'll obviously have to reach another All Ireland final, and no Munster team in over a hundred years has managed to reach five consecutive All Ireland finals.

Then there's the route they face. They'll find it hard not to beat Clare, and they dare not lose to Waterford.

Win those battles in Thurles and they qualify for a fifth consecutive Munster final, which would be at home, in Pairc Ui Chaoimh.

They wouldn't want to lose it . . . not with Galway and possibly Waterford again waiting in the last eight . . . but only five teams in the past 35 years have won Munster having beaten three of the province's four other hurling strongholds.

Two of them, incidentally, were coached by Tom Ryan, two of them by Justin McCarthy, and this year, his namesake Gerald could join him and Tom on two as well, 25 years after he supervised Tony O'Sullivan, JBM and Cummins in blazing a trail through Munster. As we all know though, that Cork side didn't win the All Ireland.

Nor did those two teams Justin and Ryan coached to Munster.

In other words, Cork . . . and Clare . . . are being asked to win six games to win the All Ireland through the front door. That's unprecedented, if not downright impossible.

But with Gerald McCarthy and Tony Considine in their first year and under so much pressure, neither can exactly turn down a Munster title.

Cork don't look like they've reinvented themselves sufficiently though. Pa Cronin looks like being the only rookie who'll start this year.

Only this Cork side, in 2005, have won an All Ireland without at least a couple of rookies starting, and they're hardly going to get away with it again.

Getting to a final last year was a squeeze as it was. Only the leadership of Donal Og Cusack and Brian Corcoran dragged them past Waterford in the semi-final, and now they no longer have Corcoran. Go through all the clashes Cork have had with their great rivals Waterford since his comeback, and though he was never Man of the Match in any of those games, Corcoran was the most influential player in those series of games. With no Corcoran to stop Declan Prendergast winning and clearing all that ball in Thurles last month, the goateed one was probably the difference between winning and losing again.

Waterford are also ahead of Cork in another respect.

The captaincy is no longer a distraction for them. It is for Cork. Kieran 'Hero' Murphy led Cork out for most of the league, but he'll hardly start for most of the championship, while Cian O'Connor doesn't need the hassle of the captaincy either. Upon Corcoran's retirement, Erins Own considered passing the honour on to Cusack, but the county board were never going to allow that. Once the final whistle at the county final sounded, a senior county board officer in the VIP box could be seen clenching his fist in delight; suffice to say, it wasn't so much that Erins Own had won but that Cloyne had been denied.

The board has continued to slowly reassert itself, and as a result, player-versusboard tension continues to simmer below the surface.

Management and players though appear to be back on cordial and conducive terms after a rocky spell around the time of Wayne Sherlock's departure and the semi-final defeat to Waterford;

McCarthy splendidly facilitated a frank and open discussion the week after that game.

Sherlock's not back though, and they'll miss him;

more, as Alan Browne says, than Sherlock will miss Cork.

And can Joe Deane and Neil Ronan, for all their lethal finishing, play without the kind of target man Corcoran, Browne and Setanta used to be? If there was a league All Star team, Ronan Curran would have been the one Cork man on it but even against Down he wasn't rested. Can he keep going all year? How long can they all keep going?

They just might. The O'Connors are back buzzing about the place. John Gardiner was held in reserve for the first 50 minutes of the Waterford game; that won't happen again. Deane wasn't even in Thurles that day. He will be the next. Go through their likely starting 15 and it's still probably the best in the country. These guys know nothing else now but to be in Munster and All Ireland finals. It's what they do.

To do it again though will rank with anything they've pulled off in the past.