The poll about who’ll win the club title has been running long enough. The results are 40% picking Portumna and roughly 20% for each of the other three, Birr, Dunloy and Loughmore Castleiney. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Portumna are the hot favourites but you never know what can happen in the club semi finals.

The new poll is pretty basic - who’ll win the league. Pretty sure Kilkenny and Waterford will be top of the voting on this one.

Not much happening yet, Tipp beat Waterford by 3 goals to win the Waterford Crystal Cup, Antrim will play Offaly in the Walsh cup decider which will be held in Antrim and the bloody Cork players are still on strike. The whole country must be sick of their agressive prima donna attitude.

As a reminder to them what real hurlers are about and some class and honour in a Cork hurler here’s part of TG4’s Ringy documentary on the greatest hurler ever. Someone has uploaded this great film to youtube but split into 6 parts because of youtube’s time restrictions.

The links to all 6 parts are:
1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=dVhwY5B-PhE
2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZGbH4sBUJFo
3. http://youtube.com/watch?v=E-5x_zRN_Qw
4. http://youtube.com/watch?v=jzxZCqFl098
5. http://youtube.com/watch?v=-jHEvSNufZM
6. http://youtube.com/watch?v=n9×1CoTEMZE

The special congress of the GAA has rejected the call for an under 19 grade to replace the minor and under 21 grades. The motion which was seeking to address the current hot topic of player burnout lost out by 115 votes to 58 which is a pretty comprehensive 2 to 1 defeat.

A motion to create an inter county close season in November and December passed with a large majority. There’ll be plenty of county managers complaining about that one but it’s a good move. The inter county season was getting out of control.

Just spotted this on youtube - a somewhat grainy clip of DJ Carey’s brilliant goal where he pulled on a cross ball first time, it hit the cross bar and came back to him and he reacted and batted it to the net. Always good to be reminded of moments of hurling magic, especially at this time of year when everyone is slogging in the mud and working on fitness.

Antrim started their year in great style by springing a surprise and beating Kilkenny in the Walsh cup. The Cats were only just back from holidays and these early season competitions will always throw up unusual results but it’s still always good to see one of the middle tier teams like Antrim beat one of the powerhouses like Kilkenny.

Elsewhere Davy Fitzgerald’s LIT showed their strength by pushing Waterford right to the wire in the semi final of the Waterford Crystal tournament. They’ll surely be favourites to lift the Fitzgibbon again this year. Saw a small bit of it on TG4 and the most bizaare thing I saw was Eoin Kelly having lost his hurl attempt some karate style studs first high kick tackle on one of the LIT guys. He was lucky he didn’t get a red card for it. Waterford will need him to keep his head screwed on straight if they want to go all the way this year.

The main fixtures this upcoming weekend are the Waterford Crystal semi finals and the start of the Walsh Cup.

Saturday January 19th
Waterford Crystal Tournament Semi Final
Tipperary v Cork IT (Templemore, 2pm)

Sunday January 20th
Waterford Crystal Tournament Semi Final
Waterford v Limerick IT (Dungarvan, 2pm)

Walsh Cup
Kilkenny v Antrim (Freshford, 2pm)
Offaly v Down (Tullamore, 1pm)
UCD v Dublin (O’Tooles, 2pm)
Wexford v Laois (Monamolin, 2pm)

We had the first game of the new year in the Waterford Crystal hurling tournament down in Waterford on Wednesday night when Waterford beat Waterford IT by 2-15 to 1-10. After the disappointing end to last year can the Deise men go all the way this year? They’re starting out in the right vein anyway!