Galway are the nearest challengers to Limerick right now

If round one of the Allianz Hurling League was an episode of First Dates, I'm fairly confident all those involved would answer yes when asked, 'would you like to see each other again?'

We had excitement in Cork, drama in Dungarvan and a sort of mixed bag elsewhere, but we didn’t expect it to be perfect and I think we got a good serving of hurling for round-one encounters.

Any learnings?

Cork have added that bit of steel to their skill. They have now been down in all of their games so far this year: three in the Munster league and against Limerick. On Saturday night, they were eight points behind twice and looking like it could have been worse.

No magic recipe here though or massive tactical switches, they just worked a lot harder and their tackle count went from 23 to 41 in the second half. Now you need the physicality and the desire to work to achieve this and this was evident straight from the restart when Tommy O’Connell gave a big fist pump after they forced one of the Limerick players into overcarrying the ball. I do love a good fist pump - the Tipp boys used to say to me that I’d be fist pumping walking around in the parade and before the national anthem even.

Cork can hurl, we all know that and if the All-Ireland was a skills competition they’d probably have accumulated over 50 titles by now. But from what we’ve seen this year from them under Pat Ryan they can now mix it too when needed. And it will be needed in abundance if they want to try and bridge that ever-increasing gap since Liam MacCarthy was on Leeside.

Laois and Westmeath need to have a serious chat with themselves and maybe a few hard truths have to be told to get to where they want to go, because right now teams are looking at them as a points-difference