Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: Crowds baying for blood in the dusty arena, Christians falling like flies and one brawny, armour-clad hero crashing through the madness and you're sitting there stoned on turkey with the remote control at hand and thinking: please, not Gladiator again.

But no, it was merely a replay of Diarmuid O'Sullivan thundering through most of the Kilkenny forward line in September's All-Ireland hurling final. Big Sully's famous leap, catch and crash - DJ and Eddie Brennan were among the Black and Amber men sent flying like skittles - is among the highlights of Final Words. The RTÉ documentary, scheduled to be screened tomorrow evening, may fall short of greatness but does contain several great moments.

"Look, the Hulk, there he goes," grins Cork's John Gardiner as the self-styled Rock of Cloyne, stripped of his hurl, cradles the falling sliotar football-style and proceeds to ram and bash his way through all that stand before him. They used Henry Shefflin to narrate the body count: "One, two, three - Jesus, I'm glad I was standing behind him."

And best of all is O'Sullivan's rather genteel explanation for what was, in the truest sense of the word, an outburst.

"I was trying to get the spirit of the team going as such," he reflects in a pious tone.

The most remarkable aspect of Final Words is that it was made at all. In recent years, Kilkenny have been notoriously cagey about public pronouncements, so much so that it has been left to DJ Carey and, before the end, Charlie Carter to sate the profusion of microphones that are drawn to Nowlan Park each summer.

This is partly due to the innate modesty of Kilkenny people - it is not a county where you would do well to be blowing on about yourself too much. But it also probably has origins in the 1998 and 1999 All-Ireland final defeats, losses that forced the current generation of players to re-examine what they wanted from their sport.

Under Brian Cody, rosy coloured and ruthless in his anxiety to stay one step ahead of laziness or complacency, they gathered and composed themselves so much that they enter next season on the threshold of becoming the greatest of all Kilkenny teams.

Cork rose from the ashes of the 2002 players' insurrection as only Cork can and found in Donal O'Grady a leader whose style was as brusque and distant as Cody's was shrouded in soft words of ambivalence. The most immediate change to occur under O'Grady's regime was the uniform mouth-zipping imposed upon the players. Silence is not a natural state for Cork people. They are great talkers.

O'Grady, though, obviously felt the best path forward for his young team was in saying nothing. Hence Cork press gatherings, traditionally rich in both content and personnel, became frustrating charades.

It was a strange stance for O'Grady, who as a schoolteacher is better positioned than most to realise that the present generation of kids are able to express themselves more naturally than any that have gone before. Young people now are not easily fazed. The Cork players amply demonstrated that themselves in what was a mature and considered and sustained collective policy during their emancipation movement against the county board.

Placing players of such capability off limits was a strange move. But it made the reflections in this documentary all the more unexpected and welcome.

Although the crew had cameras all over Croke Park on the day of the final - featuring truly superb close-up footage of Noel Hickey's hook on Timmy McCarthy and of Setanta Ó hAilpín's goal - the interviews obviously took place some months after the game itself. So, the elation of the Kilkenny boys has cooled a little and the Cork pain has settled deep and both camps are able to review the game as an event independent of them.

What comes across most strongly is how comfortable in front of the camera all these young players are. Since their minor days, they have been accustomed to television cameras pointed at them and so it simply does not bother them to stand for the stylised poses that were required for this documentary. Strange then that managers so often distrust them to sit down and articulate their thoughts and opinions.

Perhaps it was because the season was over and as such had nothing riding on it but all the contributors came across as funny and unaffected and self-effacing and, most importantly, interesting in the way they assessed the impact that All-Ireland day on their lives.

Wisely, either the makers or the player himself elected not to use DJ and somehow the great man's presence is all the more luminous for that, with Shefflin and Cody and the priceless Martin Comerford amply explaining just what he means to Kilkenny.

And equally, persuading Setanta Ó hAilpín to participate was a great coup because it now seems that in the making of this film he pulled on a Cork jersey for the final time.

Most poignant, though, was the contribution made by Gardiner, a young player who experienced something of a personal nightmare in the final as the long-range frees he had been delivering for Cork all season tailed away left and right. It went unremarked at the time that though Gardiner kept missing he also possessed the unqualified bravery to keep on shooting. As he says himself, with 80,000 people looking on, Croke Park can be the loneliest place in the world. He recounts that personal trauma - and the sheer surprise that it should occur to him - with frank dignity and humour.

All in all, crammed in between the blockbuster films and tired comedies, the drizzly and endless days of Christmas, this unseasonal blast of hurling whets the appetite for the year ahead. And it also points to a subtle change in the mood of the players. It hints that maybe the brightest stars in GAA are beginning to understand that they will not be burned for sharing their thoughts about the game that consumes their every breathing moment, that they will not be slammed for an admission of fear or disappointment or anger or weakness.

As Cody so rightly observes, hurling is a way of life in Kilkenny but it is also a blissful escape from the humdrum rituals of daily life. And the privilege of conjuring that escapism for the masters, the privilege of playing, is relatively fleeting. Talking about what that means is or should be a reflex response. For the last few years, the excellent Breaking Ball has been more successful than most mediums in coaxing the GAA's more reticent stars outside themselves. Final Words is a feature-length extension of that potential. Let us hope it is just the beginning.

For sure, nothing in hurling speaks as elegantly or unforgettably as the game at its best. But over the long, wet months when the fields are waterlogged and sticks lie idle, talking is the next-best thing. Once the players get comfortable with that idea again, the game will be in a healthier state.