Seminal events and their protagonists are at the heart of Brendan Fullam's trilogy of hurling snapshots which concludes with this publication. Over more than 15 years Fullam, a bank manager now retired, called on many hurlers whose celebrity had faded without the panoply of modern media to protect it.
Armed with a ledger into which each interviewee wrote a brief reminiscence, Fullam assembled what has turned into an invaluable archive resource - including pieces on those long gone by the time he set out with his book.
In Hurling Giants, the second of the trilogy, Martin White - the last surviving member of Kilkenny's team in the epochal 1931 hurling final and two replays against Cork - is elegiacally described as feeling like "Oisin i ndiaidh na Feinne".
He wrote his piece in the ledger and burst into silent tears as he recalled his colleagues from 1931, all departed. The reader generally can't empathise with such emotional forces but everyone will share the sense of respect.
Legends of the Ash incorporates contemporary players such as Brian Lohan and Martin Storey and it is striking to see such celebrated players in the age of live television take their place in a hall of fame stretching back to include Sim Walton, captain of Kilkenny in 1912 when news of the narrow win over Cork was conveyed to an "enormous crowd gathered outside Kilkenny Post Office" by telegram.
Each entry is gently conveyed, the narrative speaking for itself: ranging from tributes to the Michaels, O'Hehir and O Muircheartaigh, through the assured memories of the likes of Donie Nealon and Justin McCarthy through careers less rewarded, like Terence McNaughton's.
It also takes in those blighted by the casual cruelty of the times such as Limerick's Tom McGarry whose virtuosity was exiled and lost to the League of Ireland when he dabbled in inter-firms soccer and drew down on himself the crass zealotry of Rule 27.
Offaly's Paddy Molloy may have reflected on his retirement that "I knew the legs wouldn't go. You don't give hurling up; it gives you up". Brendan Fullam, however, refutes him with these simply-told tales of ordinary people made extraordinary by their achievements - often, but happily no longer, half-forgotten.
