Thanks to the NHL structures, Cork have not yet been relegated from Division 1A. Despite finishing four clear points behind Galway - a sizeable margin in a League which only consisted of five games - they travel to Salthill with a chance of condemning the hosts to 1B for next year.
Donal Og Cusack has hitched his wagon to a rival outfit this year, meaning it is up to other past players to turn whistleblower on Cork hurling.
In the Irish Examiner today, former Cork hurling captain Pat Mulcahy highlighted the three main reasons why Cork's spring form has been so dismal.
They are 'coming off a low base' from last year. Their 2015 championship season ended with a 12-point defeat to Galway. Cork conceded 2-28 against a Galway team who still managed 22 wides, meaning that they gave up a staggering fifty scoring chances over seventy minutes.
Secondly, they 'got nothing' out of last year's U21 team. As avid followers of Donal Og's analysis know, Cork have won little or nothing at underage in recent times.
And finally, and perhaps most damningly, the team had nowhere to train ahead of the League.
And Cork didn’t train on pitches before they started the league — they had nowhere to train.
I spoke to Kieran Kingston about this and they were using the fourth pitch in Mallow. So they had nothing done, which is a disgrace, from a facilities perspective.
Before this era, Cork's longest winter occurred in the mid-1990s, when they went five years (1993-97) without winning a match in the Munster championship.
The nadir was reached when Limerick hockeyed them in Pairc Ui Chaoimh in 1996, the hurling team's first championship loss in the ground.
The big question is - is the current era as bad?
