All-Ireland SHC by the numbers

1 – Last year was the only time since the introduction of a new hurling championship format in 2018 that the beaten Munster finalists failed to win their All-Ireland SHC quarter-final, with Limerick falling to Dublin.

3 – Home games won by Tipperary in the round-robin era – only one more than the number of All-Irelands claimed in the same period.

4 – Players who have made their championship debuts for Cork in the current campaign – Barry Walsh, William Buckley, Hugh O’Connor and Alan Walsh.

5 – Different counties have qualified from the Leinster SHC round-robin across the past three seasons – Kilkenny, Galway, Dublin, Wexford and now Offaly. In the same period, four have made it out of Munster, with Waterford the exception.

7 – Munster titles in the last eight years for Limerick under John Kiely, having regained the Mick Mackey Cup with victory over Cork last Sunday week.

7 – Members of the Cork panel have captained the side in a championship match – Seán O’Donoghue, Robert Downey, Mark Coleman, Séamus Harnedy and current skipper Darragh Fitzgibbon have all been appointed to the role while O’Leary deputised for O’Donoghue when he was injured in 2024 and Barrett did so for Downey last year.

11 – Kilkenny’s wait for an All-Ireland SHC title is now the county’s longest since their maiden victory in 1904. This year is the first since 1996 where they have not featured in the All-Ireland series.

12 – Stephen Bennett’s 4-24 for Waterford – amassed in under two and a half full matches, as he was forced off with a cruciate ligament injury in the first half of their penultimate outing against Cork – gave him the highest scoring average, 12.00 points per game.

13 – Points scored by Brian Hayes for Cork, along with two goals. Across the seven games of last year’s championship, he landed 5-8.

14 – Matches in a row in the championship where the Cork hurlers have played in front of a sell-out crowd, a run dating back to the 2024 All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick.

16.25 – The average winning margin for the Leinster and Munster third-placed sides in games against the Joe McDonagh Cup finalists in the All-Ireland SHC preliminary quarter-finals, which have now been dispensed with. That tally takes into account the sole win for an underdog team, when Laois got the better of Dublin in 2019.

18 – Number of starters Cork have had across their five matches so far.

23 – Years since Offaly’s last All-Ireland SHC quarter-final appearance, a loss to Tipperary. They did reach the Leinster final the following year but, following a defeat to Wexford, were eliminated in round 2 of the qualifiers.

31 – Aggregate total winning margin that Cork and Limerick had against Clare, who finished in third place in the Munster SHC.

93 – The 3-84 conceded by Cork across four round-robin games was the lowest such record of any of the sides in the Munster SHC since the format returned in 2022. The average of 23.25 points allowed per game was only slightly increased by 1-21 that Limerick scored in the provincial final.