In a land which used to pride itself on polemic and schism, this is odd in the extreme or, if you wish, in its moderation. Though it must be said that ancient tradition is upheld by a robust, subversive faction in Limerick, which seeks to explode all consensus and impose Timmy Ryan as The Greatest. In Cork, a less fractious splinter promotes the claims of Jim Hurley.

Two more players from the 1920s and '30s! It is as though those remote sepia tints can outshine all the chromatic insistence and kaleidoscopic immediacy of everything that happened since. And perhaps it is so. For the '30s was when the GAA, around its Golden Jubilee, began to be accorded the esteem which was its due.

Dev's @@STYL cf,plai Irish Press @@STYL cf,plab had much to do with it: column inches began to be lavished, games to be analysed at a level far above the superficiality that had prevailed, teams and games and heroes to be celebrated. And those were abundant; many or most from Limerick and Kilkenny but glamour and the publicity percolated and pervaded into every acre and stratum. Pity Ger Loughnane wasn't there to christen it The Golden Age of Hurling.

In the matter of midfielders, time and evolution did not cease production. Since then we've been gifted Mick Roche, John Connolly, Des Foley, Jobber McGrath, Séamus Power, Frank Cummins, Ned Wheeler, Phil Wilson; and those natural midfielders who had no time to express themselves and blossom before becoming emergency centre-backs, amongst them George O'Connor and Justin McCarthy; and the forwards who discovered a midfield vocation quite late in life, Seán Clohessy and Donie Nealon. And, whatever about unanimity as to station and gradation, all parties will agree that many midfielders of major merit have flourished in this current age of iniquity: Mike Houlihan, Andy Comerford, Ollie Baker, and, for a single matchless season, Tony Browne.

There, of course, is the rub. Must his or her career extend over a goodly number or a specified number? of years before an heroic hurler can be admitted to Valhalla? If it must, what is the habitation in the hereafter of those like Browne whose seasons of eminence were brief, but illuminated by diamonds and lightning? Then again, as the fellow said, "The reverse side has a reverse side," for if we admit to Valhalla all who incandesce brilliantly but briefly, what are we to do with innumerable, long-serving, unfailingly competent, unstinting members of supporting casts through all the ages of hurling history?

These are questions to be resolved, not by committees considering, at the behest of commerce, these Millennial Stars or those All Stars, but by citizens who appreciate the sagacity of the other fellow, who said "What motive has a man to live, if not for the pleasures of discourse?" he'd have added "well spiced with Murphys" if he hadn't been sitting sipping the sauce in ancient Athens.

Lory Meagher came slightly before your correspondent's time, but the work of the critics and commentators and raconteurs of old leaves no doubt that he had it both ways: a satisfying fulness of years on the field, and through them all, in the majority of his matches, he was the most distinguished hurler on view.

He was not of huge physique, but he was made durable by the agricultural toil of his time. No writer or story-teller mentions speed, and, indeed, it is improbable that Meagher had much: a most poignant photo shows him gazing downfield from the Hill goalmouth at a Kilkenny team in trouble during the Leinster Final of 1945, the lion in the gyves of age, hunched against a deluge enshrouding Croke Park and a sodden quenched fag is drooping from his lips.

What he did have was intelligence, skill, and, above all, style meaning an ineffable melding of elegance and serenity. No man is a supreme hurler who is not also a stylist. No man is a supreme stylist who is not also master of every skill, and every nuance of every skill, which the game comprehends.

Thus, by definition, we have no supreme stylist in the game today though we have a few quite stylish players, Tommy Dunne and John Leahy amongst them. Striking as he does many more pleasing, and effective, ground balls, Johnny Dooley probably comes nearest to the real thing: the reservation being that if he can double the overhead ball, with equal facility left and right, he ought to prove it regularly.

That was the great thing about Christy Ring. He had the aggression more than any great stylist ever to mix it where the heat was whitest as much and as often as necessary. But he was in no way shy about showing off the surpassing range of his arts and acmes. With Clare well beaten in 1959, considerable congestion developed inside the Banner 21. After some hectic moments a good ground stroke sent the sliotar skimming toward the sideline at around the 50 yards flag; and there was Ring; he'd drifted out unnoticed from his No 15 berth it was a favourite trick seemingly certain that he could magnetise the clearance. Now, with eons in which to rise it, he just changed his stance a little and cut that speeding ball back high over the centre spot on the crossbar of Thurles Sportsfield's Town End. Then he gave his unique "How about that, kid?" headshake to teenage Pat O'Leary, who was making his debut. In the following year's League final against Tipp, we were treated to the drop shot from almost an identical spot in the Athletic Grounds but, sure, I've told ye before about that one.

Precisely five years since, this column opined "Michael Cleary is probably @@STYL cf,plai the @@STYL cf,plab stylist of this age. He is unique in the refulgency of the artistry the flourishes, the grace notes, the adornments, the cadences he brings to the game, as he stirs that Wildean impulse which revels and luxuriates in beauty for it own sake."

In July '96, this column snarled at Michael Cleary for missing four frees in the replay of the Munster Final. And went on: "Limerick scored two goals at the ends of long range frees. But the frees were given away by Michael Cleary scragging young Foley at places where Foley presented no earthly danger to Tipp's net, and where any player, conscious of his duty to a team effort, would far from scragging have been jinking and balancing looking for the hook or block."

Now guess which of those commentaries set Michael Cleary to taking public albeit amateur counselling about the ways of this column? Without mentioning the other commentary! Lory Meagher had style off the field, too.