LockerRoom: It's better, they say, to live in interesting times, and, as times go, the past few days have been passably interesting. We yomped down to Kildare on Thursday and Friday for the annual wonder which is the Féile na nGael tournament. The weekend started early and it started at the grassroots. Happy and tended for once.

Odd it was to come home on Friday from the incredible hospitality of the host clubs in Kildare and to sit digesting the tales of the work they are doing to promote hurling and camogie in the hearts of the kids in their burgeoning population. Odd to be digesting all this while also watching the pictures of a surly England team creeping off their plane in a far distant spot of Luton airport.

Meanwhile, fans, mostly kids, who had queued for hours to see them were let down. Floundering for an excuse for such wanton ignorance, the FA cited security reasons. That, presumably, means the end of open-top parades for teams on the occasions when they perform well. And David Beckham, all snippy and surly when asked a civil question about his captaincy. What's happening?

You wonder sometimes how the GAA survives in the world of 24/7 Premiership coverage, but a weekend in the heart of the game tells its own story. Good news and bad news.

On Saturday, we made the short drive to Carlow. Mid-afternoon and the Dublin minor hurlers were involved in a titanic game with Wexford, one of those crazy matches with too many goals in it and neither side quite able to put the other away. In the end Dublin came through and the celebrations were wild and whirling.

It's been 21 years, after all, since Niall Quinn graced the last Dublin team to reach a Leinster minor decider. The celebrations were justified. The work that has been put into the elite squads in Dublin for the past few years is beginning to pay off and provide the proof that hurlers born in the capital can compete with anyone.

You worry though. That Dublin team of 1983 which reached the All-Ireland minor final recently got together for a weekend with their conquerors, Galway. They went to Tipp and played some golf and drank some pints. A large proportion of the Galway players went on to have substantial careers. That Dublin minor team never played together again. The county board at the time had some mad fatwah out on the under-21 competition and the potential was squandered.

Could it happen again? Why not? These past few years have been pregnant with promise, with college teams doing well, two Dublin sides reaching Leinster under-21 finals, which they should have won, and now a good minor squad emerging.

And yet, what happened in Carlow after the cavorting young Dubs left the field was salutary. First, the Kilkenny minors came on and blew Offaly away. Nothing left to chance in Kilkenny, much as we might envy them.

The players who played on Saturday are part of a fully integrated development system, which dragoons recent players into coaching development squads, not one but several, all around the county every weekend.

Kilkenny are proof that what you get back is what you put in.

So, in a way, are Dublin. The capital, with the biggest population of any county, should have the biggest hurling population also. Instead, Dublin has the highest pile of plans, blueprints and good intentions. The greatest incidence of talking shops and blowhards and hurlers congregated on the ditch. We are the seat of hurling government so long as a parliament of crows cawing their bitter words from bar stools and living-room couches amounts to government. Too few having to do too much. Too many content to pay lip service and live for the big football days.

Which brings us to the main event in Carlow: the stuffing and roasting of the Dublin senior hurlers. Not a result which will cause convulsions of grief in the pockets of hurling dotting the nation. People will look, see Kilkenny reassembling themselves, wonder what the implications are down the road. Ditto the filleting of Laois by Clare. Nobody will worry unduly.

But we should worry. Hurling is too important to be left in the hands of the people who are screwing it up or just plain neglecting it.

A year or two ago, when the GAA made tentative noises about splitting up Dublin into two administrative regions, great and anguished were the howls of protest. There were loud noises made about the sovereignty of the county. The same noises were heard again when the GAA spoke about pouring money into the county. Dublin would have to have the say over how it was spent.

Well, here we are. Sovereign kings of our own heap. We've lost a hurling development officer. We're so far behind Kilkenny and a transitional Offaly team that we can hardly see them in the distance. And we have good kids coming up and despite ourselves an outbreak of unprecedented interest in the game among the urchins of the city.

Saturday evening's beating was depressing for so many reasons. Firstly, the absence of Liam Ryan and Kevin Flynn. Team captain and star forward absconded to America. In the aftermath of such a hiding it would be easy to excuse the two lads by suggesting that by abandoning the ship when they did they were giving their verdict on the guy at the helm.

That won't wash. Loyalty to the game, to the crest and to their team-mates demanded that they stay. When hurling is competing with so much else in Dublin the message they sent was disastrous.

Much will be said this week about Humphrey Kelleher. Only the players and Humphrey know the true state of relations between them and, if it is time for a sundering, then so be it.

Kelleher deserves better than quick flits to America and grumblings in clubhouses though. He put his head on the block when nobody else would even take the county board's phone calls.

The team haven't taken off this year in the way that Kelleher dreamed of, and perhaps the traumas of the past few weeks make it unlikely that it ever will, but the man has made an honest effort. Whatever happens in the near future there are too few in Dublin hurling who can claim that.

Yesterday, we went to Thurles and just gloried in it. The scoring was sublime, the crowd was sun-kissed and mad for it. The old game has never looked better. Waterford have left the likes of Dublin and Laois way behind. Any Munster title that involves beating Clare, Tipperary and Cork is a memorable one. To have won it like Waterford did yesterday makes it indelible.

We watched and wondered. Why are some hurling famines longer than others? Because some people can accommodate the hunger and others can't tolerate it.