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Former Clare manager Ger Loughnane has accused some commentators of being "hypocrites" because of the opposition they have shown towards the payment of GAA inter-county managers.
Loughnane, who has made a remarkable recovery from an acute strain of leukaemia, has also questioned the level of payments to the various strands of administrators in the GAA and the lack of information surrounding those wage structures.
In a wide-ranging interview with Raidio na Gaeltachta's Sean Ban Breathnach on 'SBB Trathnona', to be broadcast at 2.0 today, Loughnane also gives an account of the illness which struck him down last year and his admiration for Kilkenny hurling.
He does suggest, however, that "Kilkenny lost the run of themselves" in 2010 when their five-in-a-row dreams were dashed by Tipperary.
"In my opinion it wasn't the Brian Cody that was there before. They lost the run of themselves in Kilkenny," Loughnane said.
"The whole five-in-a-row thing and what happened Henry Shefflin, that night in Nowlan Park when the injured players (John Tennyson and Shefflin) came back training and 8,000 people were there, the big applause that greeted Henry. It was most unlike Kilkenny."
On the day of the final, Loughnane (pictured) felt the game was over after only 10 minutes because Kilkenny had got their tactics wrong by allowing their full-backs to be dragged so far out the field.
"It would be very interesting to ask Brian Cody why they didn't stick with the plan in place since 2006," he said. However, Loughnane believes that Kilkenny will be just as dominant over the next few years as they had been up to 2010.
"When Wexford put a stop to them winning seven Leinster titles in a row, everyone said they wouldn't get an opportunity again to do it, but they have seven-in-a-row now and there's not a word about it.
"A lot of people thought Tipperary were at the same level last year, but they weren't. Their two best players may not play this year. Lar Corbett is gone and Eoin Kelly is not the player he was six or seven years ago.
"People are talking about the great young players in Galway, but in my opinion the best young players are in Kilkenny."
Loughnane went on to slam the "hypocrisy" of the attitude towards payment to managers.
delivered
Recalling how he had a Christmas hamper delivered to the door by the Clare secretary Pat Fitzgerald when they won the All- Ireland title in 1995, Loughnane said he didn't know if payments to managers was rampant.
"How much is the GAA paying Christy Cooney for the last three years, or the full-time county secretaries all over the country? Why don't the GAA give us that information? This is the question. Why are these people, and people who make a living from talking about hurling, why are they saying that managers shouldn't be paid? It's a type of hypocrisy."
Loughnane recalled in the interview how he had been feeling tired and lacking energy for a number of weeks this time last year before his condition was diagnosed.
"I decided that I would do everything I could to treat this, no matter how hard it was.
"That's what I kept repeating to myself all the time, and I put great confidence in the doctors."
