'Not men, but giants." It was the strapline of an ad campaign that marked Guinness's sponsorship of the hurling championship a decade ago, but it is a phrase that seemed entirely appropriate on Sunday as Tipperary beat Kilkenny in a thrilling All-Ireland final.

It was a match that will live long in the memory, especially for those like me who hail from the victorious Premier County and were in Croke Park to witness Kilkenny's bid for five titles in a row brought to a conclusive end.

Last September, it was all so different, with Tipperary losing out at the death in a match every bit as intense, passionate and keenly contested.

Both were perfect showcases for hurling, matches that combined all that's great about the game -- technical ability, guile, bravery, cunning, toughness and honesty. Nor were there blatant shows of gamesmanship or the unseemly sight of players hounding the referee.

This was sport in its purest form -- as close to the Corinthian ideal as you can get. The humility of the losers on Sunday told its own story. Kilkenny refused to seek scapegoats; they accepted defeat like the gentlemen they are.

The beauty of hurling stood out in a week in which other sports have been badly tarnished. Wayne Rooney becomes the latest in a long line of England international footballers to have their sordid off-pitch behaviour made public. Cricket is still reeling from revelations of alleged Pakistani cheating. And last week the doctor at the centre of the so-called Bloodgate scandal, which saw a Harlequins rugby player fake injury, was given the all-clear to practice medicine again, despite admissions that she had conspired in the cover-up.

If that wasn't enough, there was the tasteless rejoinder from British boxer David Haye that shocked even those normally immune to sport's ugliness. In bigging up his fight with Audley Harrison, he predicted it would be "as one-sided as a gang rape".

Men like Lar Corbett, Tipp's three-goal hero, or Brian Cody, Kilkenny's inspirational manager, operate on a different planet to the mega-bucks, marketing-driven worlds of football, cricket, rugby or boxing. Their sporting obsession is rooted in community and borne of hard work and dedication.

Their unassuming demeanour and palpable modesty is at the polar opposite to the behaviour of the likes of England cricketer Kevin Pietersen or 'The Special One', Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho. Corbett seemed almost embarrassed when receiving the Man of the Match award on The Sunday Game, and was at pains to point out the contribution of others.

Corbett and Cody make huge sacrifices, not because they are paid to do so (the travelling expenses, if applicable, are comically modest) but because hurling courses through their veins. They make time for countless hours of training in the months when the public's gaze is elsewhere and juggle their work, as electrician and primary school headmaster respectively, because they are drawn to a sport that has grabbed their respective counties for more than 100 years.

Yet both wear their talents lightly. Not for Cody, for instance, any talk of being 'The Special One' even though his managerial record of seven All-Irelands in 12 years would justify such a claim.

Hurling is not a sport in which success can be bought -- take a bow, Manchester City -- or where its greatest practitioners can be lured to a rival. Tipperary won their 26th All-Ireland thanks, in part, to a young generation of gifted players all born in the county and astutely managed by a young manager, Liam Sheedy, another hurling man who eschews self-aggrandisement in favour of plain speaking and behind-the-scenes toil.

For Stephen Shaw, a hurling obsessive from Sunderland, it is this very groundedness that makes something like an All-Ireland hurling final such a marvellous spectacle.

"I have no Irish background whatsoever and only came across hurling as a child when one of the TV channels, it might have been Channel 4, started showing games late at night," he says.

"I was drawn to it straight away. The speed of hurling and the technical qualities on show blew me away -- and continue to do so. The match on Sunday showed all that was great about the sport, its grace and brutality and essential honesty."

Shaw's interest in hurling was resurrected six years ago when he met his Galway partner, Martina, while travelling in Spain. The couple moved to Ireland in 2006 and Shaw, a TEFL teacher based in Dublin, has become a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of Galway hurling. "It was gutting to lose the quarter final in the last seconds (to a tenacious Tipperary), but what a match that was."

The Englishman's love of the game is such that he wrote a novel centred on hurling. He self-published These Green Fields last year and reckons it's the first fictional book on hurling aimed at adults. "I couldn't believe that there weren't other hurling novels out there, when you consider how intrinsic this game is in Irish life."

His devotion to hurling has puzzled some natives, who can't get their heads around why someone from abroad, and with no link whatsoever to the country, could be as enthralled as he is.

"I can't see how anybody could not appreciate what a great sport hurling is. The fact that I'm English doesn't matter. Hurling has everything you could want in sport -- drama, excitement, heartbreak . . . you name it."

He remains a football fan and a Sunderland supporter, yet Shaw says he is increasingly finding aspects of the Premier League to be repugnant.

"There's an unsavoury quality to it and money has changed the game for the worse," he says. "You look at the way the referee gets abused and that's filtered down to grassroots level and there's a nasty aggression there. Hurling is different. It's tough and combative, but you don't have that unpleasant undercurrent."

For sociologist Dr Paddy Dolan, the sense of community that hurling engenders remains as important to fans of the game now as it was when the GAA was established in 1884. And it is this attribute that makes it a special proposition. "The fact that the players can perform wonders on the pitch one day and are doing normal work like you or me the next makes the game resonate even more with the fan."

The Dublin Institute of Technology lecturer has written extensively on hurling and believes that the modern game -- typified by elite counties like Tipperary and Kilkenny -- has retained the intensity and passion of its early days, while eschewing the violence that characterised the sport in the years after the formation of the GAA.

That was especially apparent on Sunday. The challenges were fierce, but fair, and while there were a number of off-the-ball incidents --"getting to know you" moments, to use that annoying euphemism employed by some GAA fans -- the match was cleanly contested. There were handshakes and embraces between the players afterwards.

And the respect extended to the crowd, too. When Henry Shefflin, Kilkenny's towering genius, was forced off with an occurrence of a much-publicised knee injury, he was applauded by all present. I was surrounded by Tipperary people in the Davin Stand and there was genuine disappointment that this talisman would play no further part in the game.

Dolan grew up in a pocket of south Dublin where hurling was something of an alien sport. But gradual exposure to the code has helped him recognise just what a national treasure it is. "It's an amazing game," he says. "The players are so honest and courageous and there seems to be a desire to play as fairly as possible. You don't get that horrible phenomenon of players trying to get an opponent sent off and that's something that's unfortunately creeping into Gaelic football.

"It's an amateur sport in name, but the preparations that go into a showpiece match like Sunday's final are absolutely professional. The intensity that was on show for the entire game proved that. You could barely take your eyes off it."

Not men, but giants indeed.

Irish Independent