At the Manager of the Year ceremony in 1995, Ger Loughnane was presented with the top award after the Clare hurlers' annus mirabilis. In the course of a characteristically eloquent speech, Loughnane acknowledged the presence of Dublin's football manager Pat O'Neill and remembered how the two of them had been named hurler and footballer of the year, respectively, back in 1977. To think that their paths had crossed again.

They haven't crossed since and last Sunday the paths of Dublin and Clare continued their divergent trajectory. Back three years ago, there would have been more takers for Dublin than for Clare retaining their All-Ireland titles.

Although the football championship was more competitive, Dublin were experienced and had just acquired the confidence of winning a long-sought-after All-Ireland. Clare on the other hand had greatly cheered the nation with their achievements but in the eyes of many, it had been an All-Ireland lost by Offaly rather than won by Clare.

Three days ago Clare underlined their claims to be All-Ireland favourites with a powerful performance against the emerging Cork. Dublin, on the other hand, lost to Kildare for the first time in 26 years and will now go at least three years without a championship victory.

As has become customary, Clare's victory wasn't free from controversy. Loughnane's stunt of naming one team and playing another has caused much negative comment, ranging from the misleading of the public to the trampling over players' sensibilities.

The fuss is hard to understand. Managers mislead every week. Tom Carr played a selected corner back at full forward. Some managers don't feel the need to do so and that generally reflects their own take on the psychology game. At the heart of the matter is the question whether team officials have a duty to be straight with the public.

Team selections are meant to be released on Tuesdays but this hasn't been universally observed in years with many counties making announcements on Wednesday as a matter of course and sometimes even on Thursday.

How detrimental is it to the public not to know the line-out until Sunday? In an amateur sport, how compellable should team managements be if they feel some advantage is to be gained from surprise selections?

The response of the media will be self-regulating. If teams start releasing unreliable information, selections will eventually be ignored and something like the suggestion of Offaly manager Tommy Lyons in yesterday's Star newspaper - that a panel of 24 is named - may be adopted.

How this impacts on the players involved is a separate issue and a vexed one for the individuals involved. But it is a matter for the internal dynamics of intra-panel relationships. Being left in suspense as regards the bona fides of your selection is the least of the hardships a player will suffer once they sign up for Loughnane's platoon.

It is a variation on the subjugation-of-the-will theme which informs the manic training sessions far more profoundly than the actual physical requirements of championship hurling. In other words, how much a player can endure tells a great deal about his character.

No one could reasonably blame players like Fergal Hegarty, Michael O'Halloran (in particular, given the hitherto unchanging nature of the Clare defence) or Conor Clancy for resenting the style of their omissions but would they argue with the substance of the decision?

Throughout his tenure, Loughnane has apparently craved confrontation of some sort. Three years ago he effectively sabotaged the county's chances of winning a Munster under-21 title by withdrawing senior players from the team after the provincial council refused a postponement.

Last year there was a whole string of events which created agitation between him and external parties (media, Tipperary and Wexford) and sometimes internal (the refusal to let the county minors share the senior team bus). He always provides a rationale to excuse or explain - however spurious it seems - his actions and the justification always has the same bottom line, the good of Clare hurling as he presents it.

It is a strange modus operandi but so far - even if its success is hard to quantify - it has not been proved wrong.

Little in Dublin has proved right in recent times but events didn't unfold by themselves. O'Neill and his selectors stepped down within a few weeks of the 1995 All-Ireland victory and Mickey Whelan was appointed successor.

Without any continuity between the regimes, the opportunity to exploit what turned out to be a very open championship in 1996 was lost.

The slow decline of the champions reached its nadir on Sunday and although Kildare's capacity for self-destruction can never be overstated, Dublin's fall wasn't entirely surprising. Between the drawn match and replay, the demeanour of the Dublin management had become more downbeat and the notion of the team being beyond the point of no return was being openly canvassed.

Tom Carr's problem is a common enough one for managers taking over ageing teams. Initially he was inclined to give the older, more experienced players who had won the All-Ireland a further chance, particularly as the intervening years had proved chaotically unsuccessful and most of the players were anxious to have another chance. By now he has probably had a rethink on that.

For most people, Carr is facing the most difficult task of any Dublin manager over the last 25 years. He will have fewer All-Ireland medallists and virtually no proven underage talent, a situation that may be difficult to remedy given the tendency for underage success to follow that at senior level rather than vice versa.

Laois dual player Cyril Duggan is the coaching co-ordinator for Dublin. He is confident that the overhaul of the system through which young talent is processed will greatly improve the situation but he also acknowledges that the termination of Dublin's involvement will have an impact on the numbers getting involved in the summer schools.

According to Duggan, were Paul Curran to walk through some Dublin schools he wouldn't be recognised. A lack of promotional material is cited as one of the reasons Gaelic games find it so hard to break the stranglehold soccer exercises on the minds of the young.

Because the county board is strapped for cash, Dublin are unable to implement comprehensive training programmes and must concentrate on the schools already within the GAA's catchment. Unable to expand his efforts into those schools where missionary work is necessary, Duggan works hard to hold what the GAA already has.

Last Sunday hasn't made the task any easier.