Opening of Michael Cusack visitor centre:With the rain whipping across the Burren and one voice addressing the sheltering crowd, it might have been a hedge school. When Ger Loughnane speaks, Clare people listen and during a fascinating retrospective, he suggested the hastening demise of hurling would be chief among Michael Cusack's concerns if he were involved in the contemporary association.

"I think it is unfortunate but very true that one of he greatest conflicts in our association at the moment is between hurling and football. And football is becoming the dominant half. Even in our own county here in Clare, if you see what has happened to Éire Óg or at underage level in clubs like Wolfe Tones - those clubs are becoming largely football at that level. That is because the skills of hurling are so difficult to teach, so hard to practise and to master.

"And Cusack would say to us we have to think of strategies to promote hurling especially in counties beyond Cork, Tipperary and Kilkenny. Otherwise we will be left with a three-county championship. The great era of the 1990s - we can forget about it. It is over. All the teams who played epic contests at that time have fallen away and we must do something to revive that."

On what was a literal return to grassroots for the GAA, Loughnane made a strong plea to embark on a similar journey on the playing fields. Cusack's stroke of genius, he suggested, was in adapting the Catholic Church system and thereby invoking the parish rule, creating the intense local pride and energy that remains the fuel and effectively the very reason for the association. The trick, the Clare hurling man said, was to apply that fundamental in the kaleidoscopic landscape of the 21st century.

"The old Ireland was often described as being dominated by gunmen, clerics, parochial politicians and an obsession with insularity. Today's Ireland is different. These children," he said, waving a hand at the uniformed schoolchildren from Carron who opened and closed the commemoration with song, "will not be interested in that. Today's Ireland is different. It is progressive and inclusive.

"And yet, if Cusack was here now, I believe the first advice would be: go back to the first thing that made you great - the parish and the club. Over the past 10 years - and I have been part of this - the club has taken a back seat. And we cannot let our young club players sit idle or go off to America during the best three months of the year. That has to stop and the game will again prosper."

His last view about Cusack's take on the GAA 100 years after his death concerned the mass movement from rural to urban living. "Cusack was a master of creative thinking and it will take great creativity to promote and establish the GAA in these new communities."

Even in a billowing marquee, it is always startling to see the tremendous energy Loughnane brings to an occasion and Clare hurling people present must have been a little wistful at the thought of that force being let loose on Galway. If hurling does tighten into a three-county affair, it won't be for want of trying on the part of the Feakle man. Afterwards, when it was put to Loughnane he was in the wrong county now, he roared with laughter.

"Sure I'll always be in Clare," he countered, nodding north in the direction of Galway. "Anyhow, I can see across the border from here."