Locker Room:If you live in the clammy world of press boxes and deadlines you can without fear of being accused of bigotry, prejudice or intolerance say that soccer is in one way markedly different from GAA. They do things differently there, especially when it comes to the harvesting of post-match quotes. The quotes might be banal in either world, but in the GAA actually getting the quote after a match can be like harvesting cockles while the tide is out. If you don't move quickly you're in serious trouble.

In soccer they specialise in the set-piece quote-extraction occasion - post-match press conferences where everyone puts an instrument up on a table and retreats to a seat, from there to ask bland questions of managers in the slim hope of getting interesting answers.

Soccer. It's tame, but it's organised. Yep. Generally it's organised. International trips can be a culture shock. Many of us still recall with some regret and some amusement the scenes which followed one of Ireland's skirmishes in Macedonia, the one which put paid to Mick McCarthy's chances of qualifying us for the 1998 World Cup.

Mick was hustled into an adjacent nightclub, there to disgorge himself of his thoughts. There were lights flashing and a steady trickle of jubilant Macedonians filled the place up as the questions got asked.

Then suddenly the Macedonian team and the remainder of the population of Skopje exploded in, all attempting at one time to get up on the little stage where Mick sat, a comic study of glumness.

Mick, as was his wont, was friendly with the rival manager, a man whose name I cannot recall, but to whom Mick referred as Joke O. He looked in his decency to shake Joke O's hand, but the weight of many Macedonians was now pinning him to his chair as they leaned forward to squeeze into photos.

We hacks were by turn amused and alarmed. We had managed to get only a question or two worth of forlorn words out of Mick before this invasion. Finally, Mick wriggled free and headed like a hunted fugitive toward the door. We charged, like the Light Brigade, through the assembled natives in hot pursuit.

Such indignities are rare covering soccer. In GAA they are a weekly occurrence, part of the territory, part of the experience.

Yesterday, we were in Limerick. Like most GAA venues, the Gaelic Grounds has no secret passageway linking the press box to the dressingrooms so we scribes descend from the ivory tower of our contemplations and writings and dive into the milling and unwashed crowd.

This descent is a beautiful sight, worthy of capture on an Attenborough documentary. We hit the hordes full on, but (cunningly) rather than join the caravan shuffling slowly down the aisles towards the exits we hop like little sprites (no, really, like fairies dancing from lily to lily on a golden pond is how I think of us) from seat to seat down the stand praying that the seats hold firm and contain no slippery substances on their surfaces.

We get to the bottom then and convince a series of vigilant maors that we are in fact journalists and don't actually carry expensive tape recorders to matches each week just for the fun of it.

This is fun usually. There is a little banter and then finally a grudging opening of the gate and some humorous or often baleful remark relating to the quality of the stuff we write. We are held in high esteem indeed.

The baffling thing about the maor business is the fact that when you are granted access to the cool tunnel which links the two dressingrooms underneath the stand it is generally teeming with people who have no business there other than gawping, heckling, backslapping and harrooing.

Having once as a young fella blagged my way into a Cork All-Ireland dressingroom (by pretending ingeniously to be a cousin of Tom Cashman's) there to beg Jimmy Barry Murphy to give me his hurley, I have no crib with this tradition. Just that it seems to be getting easier and easier to get to the dressingroom door.

Yesterday, we gathered around Richie Bennis and pressed him against the wall and waved our questions and our recorders in his face. Richie was good value, ebullient and happy, and we thought for not the first time that this extempore manner of extracting quotes while men are still fresh from the battlefield was hard to beat.

It's hard work, but it beats soccer's other quite related innovation, the mixed zone for players, whereby we hacks drape ourselves over some temporary fencing making come-hither eyes at spoiled millionaires.

While talking to Richie we were joined by a middle-aged man who had achieved the level of inebriation for which Limerick teams have been chastised in recent years. The man was no trouble at all, just resting a hand on Richie's shoulder and saying, "Good boy, Richie Bennis. Yes, Richie" at every pause.

Richie paid no heed. It was a scene which you could scarcely imagine Arsène Wenger submitting himself to. Good boy, Arsène.

Richie, although no doubt enjoying his discussions with so many learned men, was all the time backing his way along the wall until he could feel the Limerick dressingroom door behind him.

We knew that at any stage he was about to get sucked into the mother ship and we could tell that he hoped the drunk wouldn't get sucked in with him.

Suddenly, however, all bets were off. We never give a manager or player our full, undivided attention when extracting quotes. From out of the corner of our collective eye we suddenly spotted the esteemed quote machine that is Babs Keating emerge from his lair down the corridor. We shoved Richie into the Limerick dressingroom, dumped the drunk in on top of him and formed a flying wedge as we battered our way through the dozens of onlookers and hangers-on to get to the far corner.

Babs loves microphones. If he could grow them in his garden he'd be out there all the time talking to them like Prince Charles to his daffodils. He attracts microphones like a giant, magnetic force-field. Most of us as he spoke were too far away to hear what he said; we were just leaning in over the heads and shoulders of others hoping to catch a word or two.

At time of writing I still have no idea what Babs said. Hopefully, something that involved donkeys and derbies. Or being dead for the washing. You never know. Or something demeaning about Dublin hurling. You never know.

The miracle of Babs is his tongue. He doesn't really care at the end of the day what people think of what he says. He just says it and lets the pieces fall where they may. You can be expelled from the NUJ if you are within half a mile of Babs when he speaks and you don't record it.

The point of all this? It's to emphasise yet another area where hurling scores over all sports. The post-match managerial press conferences. There are more colourful managers in hurling happy to submit themselves to this colourful chaos than there are in the entire English Premiership and Gaelic football universes combined.

Liam Griffin is still not back giving us good stuff, but on Saturday night we had John Meyler in full flow, which was top class. Richie and Babs cleared their throats yesterday. Gerald and Justin are good when they want to be. And Loughnane has still to take the stage. Irresistible.

New batteries! Make sure the little red light is on! Action!