Madam, - I would find it very hard to believe that there were music critics so short of imagination and appreciation in the early part of the last century as to roundly declare that the art of singing was dying, simply because of the arrival on the operatic stage of a singer whose name was Enrico Caruso, a wonderful tenor who was and still is the greatest of them all - an inspiration then and now to all other tenors.
Yet, when the Kilkenny hurlers prove to the world just what a truly unique and wonderful game our national game is, we have all the gang in radio, TV and newspapers crying out that hurling is dying, if not already dead.
I do not recall any soccer writers in the recent past mourning the dead of that great game when Brazil and Holland - to name but two - set standards which all the others were forced to at least attempt to emulate. - Yours, etc,
JOSEPH SHORTALL, Donnycarney, Dublin 5.