If Offaly win Sunday's AllIreland, Hubert Rigney is unlikely to set the sort of longspeaking records which will be under threat in a fortnight when either Glen Ryan or Ray Silke take the podium.
Quietly spoken and private, the Offaly captain doesn't risk controversy in his public utterances.
His hurling is, however, eloquent. One of the most versatile players on the panel, he has played full back and centre-back in this championship and has All-Ireland medals at corner-back (minor in 1989) and centre-back (senior 1994). He has also played centrefield for the county.
He professes not to mind where he plays on the team but he is most familiar to hurling followers as a centre-back. His style and capabilities are perfectly suited to anchoring the defence of the current team.
Not the paciest hurler, he nonetheless can read a game intuitively and distribute intelligently. Rigney is unlikely to be spotted on adventurous forays up the field, his clearances will be quickly and accurately dispatched.
Earlier in the year, when it appeared as if Kevin Kinahan would not be fit to play full back, Rigney took over on the edge of the square but once Kinahan returned, the best position for Rigney from the team's perspective was always going to be centreback.
Brian Whelahan had been playing there but was - in the words of one former manager - "too good a hurler to play there". The point here was that Whelahan's game involves too much clearing up in order to unleash long, relieving clearances.
"Brian moves from wing to wing to tidy up ball. Hubert minds his own patch in the middle and leaves the wings to themselves. Brian would be missing too often from the middle."
Another former manager expresses surprise in the way opponents play Offaly's half-backs. "The tendency is to drop the ball on top of Hubert. But it never works and leaves Brian to clean up behind the line. If they tried to drop a few on Brian it might work better."
In the semi-finals against Clare, Rigney's contribution was vital. He held the line in all three matches, cleaning up on dropping ball and digging out anything that broke. Interestingly, his perceived weakness in dealing with a running centre forward never showed at any stage, despite the number of runners Clare possess and the combinations they tried on him.
His technique isn't always to pull on the ball or drive it forward as he also deploys his stickwork to block or tap it away before clearing it out of defence.
Surprisingly, given his skill, Rigney was a late starter and says he didn't start playing until a comparatively advanced age.
"I was probably 11 when I started hurling with Rynagh's and I've been at it since. It was a bit late but I hadn't been involved at all before that. I wouldn't have bothered really, only my brothers were at it. We were just outside the town. And I hadn't played any other sport up to then.
"My family (three brothers and four sisters), father and older brothers were all geared towards hurling. You go to school, get involved with school hurling, go in and hurl with your friends and it grows from there."
Like his team-mates, Rigney appreciates the strange turn of events taken by this championship.
"All we did at the start of the year was take it one game at a time. Wexford was a huge game for us and the fact that we won it gave us an incentive but the Leinster final and the way the team played in general and the way things went after that left us not knowing where we were. Things seemed to be falling apart.
"We're hoping we can get back the sort of form we had when winning the All-Ireland in 1994. It was great to beat Clare. They were All-Ireland champions, great All-Ireland champions and we were delighted with the victory, but it only puts us as far as an All-Ireland final. We've nothing won."
The facts . . .
Club: St Rynagh's.
Age: 27.
Job: Tullamore Frozen Foods employee.
Height: 5 ft 11 ins.
Weight: 12st.
Honours: All-Ireland SHC - 1994; All-Ireland MHC - 1989; NHL - 1991; Leinster SHC - 1994, 1995; Leinster Under-21 - 1992.
(Profile: Sean Moran)
