Replying To Stool Pigeon:  "Almost every club has a player(s) in it who have been consistently excellent at 'club level' for years but would look like a fish up a tree at county level. This idea of only picking lads 'playing well at club level' is a terrible idea in reality, and if you want to go down the road of excluding players from the swathes of clubs who aren't 'competing in senior club finals consistently' you'd soon find out how truly dreadful an idea it actually is.

Toms won 6 in a row and are the reigning All Ireland Champions, but how many of those excellent club players were able to establish a consistent presence in a Galway team that wasn't exactly setting the world alight for much of that period?"

Replying To PoolSturgeon:  "I have a theory about the club/county thing which some may guffaw at but which I think is self-evidently true. If a manager decides to make the county champions the backbone of the county team they need to hope that those county champions aren't TOO SUCCESSFUL (i.e. reaching the All Ireland club final) or else the players from the club champions they want to backbone the team need to be managed better in terms of transitioning them back into county training and onto the county team. This has become even more crucial now in this era of the split season where successful club players who play for the county can be training and playing all year round without any break. These very successful amateur players are doing professional levels of training for 11/12 months of the year without any break...contrast that with full-time professional players in other sports who are guaranteed a couple of months off every year before they start pre-season training.

Personally I think because St Thomas's were such a successful team it impacted on the performance of some of their star players when they represented the county. Up until this year Conor Cooney was indisputably the best club hurler in the county by some distance over the previous 4 to 5 years yet seldom if ever came close to reaching that level of performance when representing Galway (of course, inter-county is a much higher standard but imo that doesnt fully solve the conundrum). Fintan Burke a year or 2 ago went on record about the huge demands made on successful club players who play for the county and how difficult it was to keep the momentum and maintain a high level of performance across the entire club and county season. Within a couple of weeks of winning the All Ireland last year the St Thomas's players were back training and playing league hurling with Galway which to me seemed madness at the time. The O'Loughlin Gael lads were back quickly with Kilkenny too and the Glen players fielded the following week with Derry after playing in the club football final so the madness was not just a Galway thing. The year following Ballygunner winning their club All Ireland saw Waterford produce their worst performances in the Munster championship, the start of their "failing to win a game" sequence.

My only point is that if your club champions are reaching All Ireland finals the county players need to be given a proper break from training and playing (I'd say 6 to 8 weeks) if you want them to have a chance of playing close to their best for the county the following year."

Replying To Pope_Benedict:  "On the other hand, while Fintan Burke has always looked like a dominant outstanding player at club level, he has never imo looked like a dominant outstanding player at intercounty level. It could be just the step up in standard that's catching these fellas too, regardless of how dominant and successful their club activity is, and regardless of their training schedules."