In the fact, the deader the better... and the longer they were dead, the better as well. If alive, the hurlers - with the honourable exception of Offaly's Brian Whelahan - preferably had be well over sixty and a balding or white haired shadow of their former selves.

Now, don't worry. An Fear Rua has no intention of getting into quibbles about the composition of this team. He's heard enough raised voices on this topic in the back 'shnug' of Ma Molloy's famous drinking emporium to want to add to that clamour further. A shrewd comment made by one of the Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds 'wide' boys was that postage stamps were the right way to commemorate famous players, since so much progression in the GAA still depends on licking, preferably arse licking - either of selectors or of club or county board officials.

The fact of the matter is that these kinds of selections, while they may help to pass away a few hours debate in a pub or provide questions for a pub quiz - and so serve some useful purpose - they are a fundamentally flawed concept. It's just not possible to run the selection rule fairly over the hurlers of the past hundred years or so. Inevitably - as this latest selection has shown - the final choices will be largely determined by the age profile of the selectors and, possibly, their county or province of origin. That's why the Thirties, Forties and Fifties are probably disproportionately represented in the fifteen.

What's more important about this selection is what it says to us about the modern game of hurling. Were the Nineties, after all, just some kind of mass hallucination or optical illusion? Were we just kidding ourselves about all the extra colour, excitement and increased attendances we witnessed, particularly after Clare's fantastic victory in ྛ? How many times have we read or heard scribes in the national 'meeja' telling us these were the best days ever for hurling and that the standard had never been higher?

Who has the right of it? The Millennium selectors or the 'meeja' scribes?

If you go by the selection of the Millennium team, then to adapt the words of Philip Larkin's mordant poem about his discovery of sex, great hurling ended 'somewhere between 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and the Beatles' first LP...' (For the benefit of our younger readers, that would place it sometime around 1962).

But, in a way, both selectors and 'meeja' are right, but in different ways. Already this year, with the early demise of Clare from the hurling championship, it seems to An Fear Rua that a stark void has opened up in the game of hurling and there are danger signs looming. We have become accustomed to the towering influence of the Great Ger Loughnane Himself (all present turn towards Bodyke and bow to the waist three times) and his stalwart teams. For the future of Clare and of hurling a key question is, pace Gearóid MacÁdhaimh, 'Have they gone away, you know?'. Certainly, the portents in Clare at Under-21 level are not an encouraging response.

Even more worrying has been the failure of the Leinster 'round robin' system to raise the standard in any way this year and this concern is reinforced by the dismal performance of the hurling 'stronghold' of Wexford. This was followed by internecine warfare among county board delegates that threatened to put the ྞ Rebellion and the Burning of Scullabogue in the ha'penny place. The ignominious manner of Offaly's defeat in the Leinster final was followed by a deservedly narrow quarterfinal squeak by a gallant Derry. Inevitably, these events have resulted in a veritable rash of proposals and comments from GAA officials and 'meeja' commentators on the need to scrap/amend/retain the round robin/back door/ provincial championship system. (Please delete as appropriate.)

In the light of these recent developments, another feature of the 'Mausoleum Team' may not be so far off the mark: it is dominated by players from the traditional 'Big Three' in hurling- Tipperary, Kilkenny and Cork. If the Millennium selection is a guideline, then hurling has seen its best days but - in its heyday - was best exemplified in these three counties. Already AFR can hear the rumblings of apoplexy from his friends in Galway, Offaly, Limerick, Wexford, the fair Déise and even in Dublin. It may be heresy in some quarters to even think it, but maybe the Millennium selectors are right and maybe this is how it is - and indeed, how it ought to be - with the game of hurling?

Hurling enthusiasts such as AFR himself - fortunate enough to have been born into the game of hurling in one of the stronger counties - are always eager to proselytise the game into the so-called 'weaker' counties. Often this missionary activity is based on a premise that while Gaelic football is only a bastardised upstart of a mere one hundred or so years of age, hurling has been played for more than a thousand years, and is inherently more 'Gaelic', more 'native' or whatever and, therefore, more superior than football.

So maybe there is nothing inherently wrong with a set-up that sees the 'Big Three' always dominating, but with occasional interludes of supremacy for other lesser counties? There are many distinctive aspects of Irish life that are not universally practised throughout the thirty-two counties, usually the older, more 'Gaelic' these are, the less widespread they are. But they are not diminished or in any way less respected. The Irish language is confined to a dwindling handful of counties. Certain counties have much stronger traditions in Irish music and dancing than others do. Wexford is the last great centre for mummers in this country. Road bowling is confined to Cork and Armagh. Even a foreign game like rugby is essentially a 'Game of Two Cities' - Dublin and Limerick. Maybe, then, it is the natural order of things that consistently great hurling is confined to the three big farming counties abutting the famous Golden Vale and that it is a total waste of time to be dreaming up various 'sticking plaster' schemes to even out the standards between stronger and weaker counties?

Could it be that a kind of Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' or 'natural selection' has been going on in hurling for the past one hundred years? AFR once sat beside Cork's distinguished historian, Professor Joe Lee, at a lunch in the Department of Foreign Affairs and heard him expound his theory on the underlying economic and social reasons for the uneven spread of the hurling game and the wider dispersal of football. Hurling is a Summer game essentially, requiring good, level fast ground and with a certain amount of basic expenditure required on hurling sticks. Ideal for the fat farming lands of Tipp, Cork, Kilkenny and parts of Limerick, Waterford, Offaly, Laois and Wexford - mainly the Golden Vale of Munster and areas contiguous to it. Football, on the other hand, is essentially a Winter game, requiring no equipment only a football, and thus was ideal for the poorer, boggy lands of the West, North and North West (and, of course, Kerry and West Cork!). Therefore, artificial attempts to transplant hurling into counties that have no traditional affinity with it may be a waste of money and other resources and be doomed to failure?

Maybe it is time to concede and recognise a 'natural order of things' in the world of hurling? Perhaps 'the revival of hurling' should now be consigned to the national pantheon containing those other great unachievable 'national aims' like the Revival of Irish or The Draining of The Shannon?