SUDDENLY we are disappearing under a (welcome) avalanche of GAA books.

Players discard their boots and pick up their pens or their ghost writers and place themselves lucratively between covers. Inky sentimentalists excavate buried eras.

Freshly finished sporting seasons are dissected and examined for statistical and prosodic length in the surgery of the word processor. Best of all, somebody has taken the time to write down a history of hurling.

For a while now we have taken the beautiful game for granted treating its summer-flow like a reliable source of spring water, bottled, consumed and tested for purity. It's surprising, perhaps, in an era when Rupert Murdoch appears determined to iron the kinks out of native cultures, to find hurling in such good health and flourishing not just as a cultural curiosity but as a thriving and vital sport here on the outskirts of Europe.

What a unique experience an afternoon of hurling is. You can get closer to the soul of the country standing on a grassy bank in November than you can inhaling a lifetime's worth of dust in the National Library. It was about time for somebody to take the magnifying glass to this phenomenon.

Dr Kevin Whelan has made admirable and fascinating progress in mapping out hurling's geographic quirks and regional differences. Seamus King has supplemented that work by patiently tracing the game to source.

This is a book which advertises diligent research and love of subject on every page. The early chapters are the most riveting, chronicling as they do hurling's fortunes in the era before the GAA institutionalised the game.

King maps the history, tracing his finger across the faded line which begins in 1272 BC with the Fir Bolg creating hurling's first upset when tipping about in a twenty-seven-a-side name with the highly fancied Tuatha De Dannan. Touchstones. Cu Chulainn. The proscription of the game in the statute of Kilkenny. The sententious Seathrun Ceitinn chastising those in the 17th century who passed their lives "hurling, drinking and playing, swearing and babbling".

This is great stuff. King, brings us news of a "bad game" played near Carrick-on-Suir in 1788: "A miserable match it was Play commenced at night fall and lasted only ten minutes."

The treasure of this book is in the material not extant in living memory. Calamities like the Famine and great enthusiasm like the American Invasion marked the ebb and flow of the game's development. King has gathered in the testimony from a hub variety of sources.

The excellence of the research throughout is matched by the digging which has produced some memorable photographs, such as a shot of a South African hurling team, and a wonderful study of the great Lorenzo Meagher with his skeletal features wrapped around a cigarette and tucked between a cap and an upturned collar, chatting idly to Kilkenny goalie Jimmy Walsh during the Leinster final of 1945.

The pace lags slightly as the tale brings us closer to the present and King is forced to record events about which every sinner in the realm of hurling has, opinions. The book ends with, ban accurate reflection of hurling's helter-skelter fortunes of the last few years, from the pessimistic diagnosis of the 1994 GAA congress to the shot of adrenalin which Clare's victory in the 1995 All-Ireland final provided.

Little is made of the extraordinarily positive impact which the imaginative sponsorship of Guinness has had on hurling and, more understandably perhaps, not enough attention is paid to the fortunes of hurling clubs who have kept the game alive up and down the country. King restricts himself to the business of the inter-county fare, but in a book of this nature perhaps that is unavoidable.

In the last century or so of its existence, too little has been written about the cultural phenomenon which is the GAA.

Far too little has been written about hurling. Seamus King's contribution is an important milestone, a fine and diligent work which will bring any hurling lover a better understanding of the game.