T he results of the survey on attitudes to Irish sport carried out by Pembroke Communications produced some interesting findings.

Not surprisingly, those who participated ranked the Irish rugby team's Grand Slam win and Leinster's Heineken Cup success one and two in the list of greatest sporting achievements in 2009.

Shane Lowry's Irish Open victory, along with Kilkenny's four-in-a-row and the Irish soccer team's unbeaten run through their World Cup qualifying group all featured in the top five.

Other notable achievements in the top ten in what was an exceptional sporting year were John Oxx and Mick Kinane's masterful handling of Sea The Stars' epic Group One season and Katie Taylor winning her fourth successive European boxing championship.

When it came to selecting Ireland's greatest current sports star, Brian O'Driscoll topped a list that included Pádraig Harrington, Paul O'Connell, Shay Given, Derval O'Rourke, Henry Shefflin, Colm Cooper, Rory McIlroy and Taylor.

One thing that connects all of the aforementioned is that their achievements on the sporting fields have been recognised and honoured at one point or another under the longest running and arguably most prestigious sports award scheme we have in this country, the Texaco Sportstar awards.

Something I found noticeable about some of the commentary on the survey was how it hinted that Gaelic football and hurling appeared to play second fiddle to international sports when fans are weighing up the respective merits of the different achievements. I don't think it's particularly surprising, especially given the domestic base and localised nature of the GAA, and the scale of what was achieved on the rugby fields this year.

But I think it's right and meaningful that we have an awards scheme that recognises outstanding athletic achievement across the entire sporting spectrum, and it's great the GAA has always been seen as an integral part of that by the Texaco awards, woven as it is into the fabric of Irish society.

This year, Tommy Walsh's stellar hurling season has seen him garner every individual award the game has to offer, as well as automatic selection on both the All-Stars and GPA team of the year. Yet, given it's 52-year history, the list of previous winners and the fact he is being honoured with the cream of professional and amateur Irish sport, I think this one may very well mean the most. It's also fitting, that in the 125th year of the GAA, a year when Kilkenny made history, another Kilkenny legend will receive this year's Texaco Hall of Fame award at a function in Dublin on Thursday night.

I'm not old enough to remember Eddie Keher play, but you couldn't grow up in the 1970s and not be aware of his legacy and what he had achieved. I've only ever seen glimpses of his genius on the television, but a trawl through the records tells the full story. Through the '90s and into this century, we've marvelled at the scoring feats of DJ, Joe Deane, Paul Flynn Eoin Kelly, and especially Henry Shefflin. But Keher was arguably the first real scoring machine the game had ever seen.

I know people will refer to great individual performances beforehand, but not even legends such as Ring, Rackard or Doyle produced the same tallies with the same consistency and for as long as the Rower-Inistioge clubman did.

That over 20 years after his retirement, he still tops the all-time championship scoring record with a massive 35-334 is astonishing. That's an average of nearly nine points a game in each of the 50 championship matches in which he played. While Shefflin is rapidly closing in on that target, he, or anyone else for that matter, is highly unlikely to come close to surpassing Keher's unbelievable 211-1429 tally in 298 senior matches.

A former Clare player I spoke to last week, who played against him in the league, including a couple of finals in the mid-'70s, rated the Kilkenny team he played on as highly as the current side. But his chief memory was of Keher arrowing free after free, score after score, over the black spot all day long in one of those finals. He just never seemed to miss, and the science he applied to his technique, especially on the frees, arguably marks him out as the greatest dead ball exponent the game has ever seen.

That may help to explain why he finished his career with six All-Ireland medals, five consecutive All-Stars, three National Leagues and the 1972 hurler of the year award.

What stands out for me, however, above all the statistics, was what he did on the biggest stage in the hurling year: the All-Ireland final. Okay, he played in ten finals. But his scoring feats on the first Sunday in September are truly remarkable. Five of the top six totals in All-Ireland finals are his -- 0-14 against Waterford in 1963; 2-11 and incredibly on the losing side v Tipperary in 1971; 1-11 v Limerick in 1974; 2-7 v Galway in 1975 and 2-9 in an immense individual display against Cork in 1972.

To be a marked man and still have the skill and temperament to produce those performances with that level of consistency, should leave no doubt as to Keher's place in Irish sporting history. Ronnie Delany, Willie John McBride, Christy O'Connor Jnr, Karl Mullen, Eamonn Coghlan, Mick O'Dwyer, Kevin Heffernan, Johnny Giles and Sean Kelly have all received the Hall of Fame award in the past. Few would question that Eddie Keher belongs in that exalted company of Irish sporting greats.

Sunday Independent