Time to deliver

LIMERICK and Clare last weekend. Galway and Dublin next weekend. Cork and Waterford to follow in less than two weeks’ time. The heavyweight clashes are certainly arriving thick and fast in this year’s Senior Hurling Championship.
The stakes for Galway in this Sunday’s Leinster SHC quarter-final clash with Dublin at Croke Park (throw-in 2 o’clock) are difficult to understate and it’s a match that will open up the summer for the winner while simultaneously placing a succession of tough hurdles, probably too many to overcome, in front of the loser.
A victory would over-write Galway’s nondescript league form and quickly shift the focus to a provincial semi-final meeting with Offaly or Laois on Saturday, June 20. With that would come the prospect of a crack at a Kilkenny side beginning Championship life post Henry Shefflin, JJ Delaney, Tommy Walsh, Brian Hogan and Aidan Fogarty, and the 43 All-Ireland medals and 29 All-Star awards worth of experience that retired with them.
On the flip side, defeat at GAA headquarters would only intensify the heat on manager Anthony Cunningham, now into his fourth season, and consign Galway to a Phase 1 qualifier on July 4 where the prospect of meeting a wounded Clare, or one of the losing Munster semi-finalists, would be quite high.