Outside Edge has been incognito, incommunicado and incandrinking during the off-season. Having stumbled out during opening hours in early April and peered quizzically at the weird orange orb that was making the pub's heaters redundant, then he looked expectantly for a game of cricket taking place. Hopes dashed like a FIFA presidential challenger, Outside Edge stocked up on cheap cans of Bavaria with some industrial strength Listerine to wash down the furniture polish and settled in to await the coming of summer.

"Ah, that's more like it", he thought as the familiar dampness began forming round his trouser area on a Sunday in May. "This is what cricket in Leinster is all about; horizontal rain, gale-force winds and the incomprehensible accents of north county Dublin." But while a sense of the familiar is as comforting as a Stu Daultrey rant about Northern cricket there is still nothing funny in bowling with a bar of soap on a surface as responsive as the HSE to a request for a hospital bed. It's almost as if Leinster cricket suffered from some weird reversal of Seasonal Affected Disorder - every time the cricket season comes round, our summers get depressed.

And then, like an interest rate reduction from the IMF or an lbw decision from Dundrum, comes something to make you think that all is right with the world. No, ITV haven't put out a hit on Ant and Dec nor has Spongebob got some proper pants and it's not even that Pembroke have got a square again. Nothing like that, it's just the under 11 kids you've coached finally winning a match after four losses on the trot. It's the realisation that crawling out of bed on a Sunday morning might serve some purpose other than proving that ten pints the night before is always a bad idea. And then to follow that up with a tie against the unbeaten league leaders, with a couple of kids playing their first ever game, puts the non-drip gloss on it. Of course, the downside to all this coaching is that in a few years time the same kids will be battering your best deliveries to all corners with a condescending smirk on their faces.

But just as the sun started shining and the Vanish finally wiped out all last season's stains we get games cancelled because some old queen (insert your own joke here) was tramping around the Phoenix Park panhandling for Guinness. More games were called off because a yank decided to grace the old sod looking for his ancestors (load of cobblers). Why couldn't he be satisfied with kissing the Blarney Stone or singing rebel songs in the Stag's Head (or should that be the other way round)? And why wasn't he given a cricket bat to commemorate his visit - with one of the oldest clubs just down the road? After all, giving people hurleys on the north side is just asking for trouble.

But at least old traditions haven't been entirely ignored. Just recently a match had to be abandoned because of (alleged) violence. The only surprise is that it didn't feature any clubs from north county Dublin but, happily, it will keep Stu Daultrey in copy for the rest of the season.

                                       Sean Smith