SIDELINE CUT:Very few counties can live with the standards of the Kilkenny hurlers so why point the finger at the county's outclassed footballers, asks KEITH DUGGAN

IS THERE a more interesting team in Ireland than the Kilkenny footballers right now? “Yes” is most likely the short and emphatic reply many would offer. But still, there is something haunting about the predicament in which the “other” stripy men find themselves.

This afternoon, the Kilkenny men will run out against Limerick in Newcastle West, a fixture that is not exactly causing traffic congestion on Ticketmaster. All logic dictates that it would take divine intervention for the Kilkenny men to win and even if the Lord himself was named at full forward, there is no guarantee he would show up.

Put Him in Kilkenny shoes for a weekend of sport and He would probably opt for hurling. The statistics attached to Kilkenny’s football teams are accusatory in their mind-boggling scope. The senior team conceded 9-23 to Fermanagh in the opening match of the league. The under-21s coughed up 6-34 to Louth in the Leinster championship.

The irony will not be lost on Kilkenny folk; these are more like hurling than football scores. In fact, these are the kind of scores the Kilkenny hurlers would post against the hurlers of, well Fermanagh and Louth and most county teams in Ireland if they happened to meet on the field of play.

Overall, Kilkenny are in a curious position. The county is so richly associated with hurling brilliance and its people so enthralled by the game that football has been consigned to the wasteland. Its pastoral lands are exclusively devoted to hurling and its city may be roomy enough to accommodate tourism and the arts, a decent soccer club as well as producing several enigmatic rock bands down the years but Gaelic football, source of Ireland’s biggest summer jamboree, does not get a look in.

Kilkenny has no football equivalent of the Amish community, living in dedicated isolation and trying to promote its ways to their children. Football people mutter that the Cats attitude to the big-ball game is a kind of snobbery, that the indifference to football is a rejection of the game. And maybe it is. But that accusation reveals the superiority attitude inherent in Gaelic football culture.

Why should Kilkenny footballers be singled out for not being able to live up to the standards of the other county sides in Ireland when very few counties could live with the standards of the Kilkenny hurlers? Why is the same obligation not placed on the struggling hurling counties to up their game?

The answer is probably to do with the fact that hurling is a ridiculously skilful and technical game. It takes hours of dedication just to be competent at it. To display the kind of mastery of the form that Kilkenny teams have progressively demonstrated for over a century demands the kind of singular attitude that they have shown in harvesting the game.

Football, in contrast, is not that difficult. That is not to deride the skill of the GAA’s most popular sport. But it is a slower game, it takes much longer for a team to transfer the ball from one end of the field to the other and plenty of men have had decent county careers without being able to kick the ball all that well.

Teams are coming up with ever more sophisticated defensive strategies to make that journey even more difficult for opposition teams. It is not uncommon for teams to go a full 30 minutes without a score in Gaelic football. That is why the kind of scores that Kilkenny have conceded recently are raising eyebrows. Very few people get to see Kilkenny play football so the scorelines beg all kinds of questions. How is it possible to concede that many scores?

Couldn’t they slow the game time, delay kick-outs, foul more often, anything to break up the flow of the other team? If the last 10 years of Gaelic games have proven anything, it is that it is possible for football teams to reinvent their fortunes. Fermanagh football people could tell you that. They know what it feels like to be the whipping boys and maybe that was why they administered such a relentless beating to Kilkenny.

Right now, promoting Gaelic football in Kilkenny seems next to impossible. The hurling team has a singular grip on the public imagination for obvious reasons. Any child interested in sport is going to be so dazzled by the seemingly never-ending story of Kilkenny splendour that they can scarcely be aware of the football team. The chances are that if a young player is good at Gaelic football, he will be good at hurling also. Asking him to divert his potential to the obscure charms of playing football in black and amber stripes is asking too much. They are going to want to join the packed auditions at minor and under-21 level and see if they can cut it.

Right now, the notion of Kilkenny children having the ambition to play football for their county is a contradiction – you can’t have ambition to be the worst at something.

And that has been the lot of Kilkenny’s footballers for years. It is a heavy cross to bear and the 15 players and substitutes who show up against Limerick today are showing courage in their willingness to be there. There is nothing more demoralising in sport than losing all the time and the easier option – the sensible option – is to quietly bow out. Everyone has given up on Kilkenny football as a lost cause, surely the players will as well.

But quitting the league would be a mistake. Kilkenny football is in a bleak place, it is gone far beyond a joke. And it could get worse. They could ship bigger beatings in the league.

For the players in the dressingroom today, the position is clear. It is Kilkenny against the world. There is no football structure in the county and less interest. They struggled just to come up with 15 players for the under-21 debacle in midweek and the scoreline explains why so many potential players preferred not to take the last-minute phone call. Winning a match against any county team in Ireland is years beyond the senior team. In that sense, their future is joyless.

Instead, their goals will have to be more modest and private. They are going to have to aim to lose by no more than 30 and 20 and 10 points. They are going to have to aim to score three and four and five points, to keep possession for at least five passes and then six. And so on. They are going to have to drag themselves back to the land of respectability while suffering through this interminable losing streak.

There is no shame in losing. Every team loses: ask the Kilkenny hurlers. And there is no reason why a county that habitually fields staggeringly gifted exponents of one of the most thrilling games on earth can’t also field a competent football team. It will take a collective decision by every club in Kilkenny to promote the game starting at under-seven level and the drafting of a blueprint and, perhaps, a version of conscription where all talented dual players will be eligible for selection for minor and under-21 football teams until the day comes when playing football for Kilkenny is no longer regarded as a ritual in guaranteed humiliation.

You can say what you like about the Kilkenny footballers after Limerick put up another telephone number against them. But they are still there. They are showing up, come what may. Kilkenny never quit. Isn’t that what they say?