Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: For GAA fans, these are the months of contemplation. In a blink the country changes from championship-saturated - that midsummer time when the sky holds a pink glow all night, when Tyrone and Derry have drawn yet again and the GAC threatens to start lining hurlers up against the wall in Kilmainham Gaol - to a dark and silent place.
Abruptly the hype, the scale and the wonder disappears. The All-Star weekend serves as a clarion call for The End. The heroes of the season gone turn out in frills and shined shoes, wave bashfully at the cameras, eat, drink and do the hokey-cokey. You thought Brian Cody got jiggy on the sideline? Imagine what happens when Santana come on the loud system.
The All-Stars is a bit like the famous Christmas armistice during the First World War, when the troops came out of the trenches to kick ball. Championship seasons are so dense and serious now and rivalries so relentlessly intense that the players rarely get the opportunity to socialise. The All-Stars are a one-off weekend where the rewarded players of any given year are encouraged to get up close and admire each other's dickie-bows.
Someone was reminiscing this week about an All-Star event that was attended by a Galway hurler who wore a dazzling all-white suit. This was in the 1980s so the guy was lucky he didn't find himself ushered onto the stage for another celebratory rendition of What's Another Year?, an anthem that would, as it turned out, have been utterly prescient from a maroon perspective.
Preliminary investigations led to assurances that the man in white on that long forgotten evening was not Gerry McInerney. This was disappointing as Gerry was and probably remains The Coolest GAA Player of the Twentieth Century. McInerney in full flow in Ireland circa 1987 was a genuinely exotic sight. Bono was only trotting after him when it came to hip. Here was a guy who used to fly home from the US - who looked, in fact, as if he had just slipped away from a particularly happening party in Studio 54 - to play a couple of games every summer in Croke Park.
He had a real tan while the rest of us were paler than Monaghan milk (Remember when wee Barry McGuigan first appeared on television and he was so anaemic it was like watching a pair of magic shorts and gloves dart about the ring?).
And McInerney wore a moustache and his black hair kind of long, which suited his fearless, all-conquering style. Dashing was what they used call him. And he wore white boots. He got away with wearing white boots because he was winning loads of ball and Galway were winning All-Irelands. Come to think of it, a white suit for the All-Stars would probably have been passé for Gerry McInerney. The man probably donned a white tux just to wash the goddamn dishes.
But whoever the Galway player was - Tony Keady was mentioned but we don't want to libel - was probably confident that there would be safety in numbers. This was the '80s and when it came to the season's honours in hurling, Galway were up there bossing the rest about. Not always winning but from 1985 to 1990, pretty much the team to beat.
So what the hell has gone wrong? Last night in Dublin, Ollie Canning of Portumna was the western county's sole claimant to splendour throughout the hurling year just gone.
And Canning, converted from yet another diminutive trickster of an attacker to a flawless and spirited corner back, seems to have all of the lost qualities of Galway hurling bouncing around in his chest. He alone seems impervious to the unreadable and notorious mood swings that have afflicted Galway hurling for over a generation now. Tell you what, there may be no connection but Galway hurling's star fell with that of her former Bishop, Eamon Casey - 1993 remains a landmark year.
When Galway lost that year's All-Ireland to Kilkenny, there was no need to panic. The county had come again after the thrilling and traumatic loss to John Fitzgibbon and Cork three years earlier. The Rabbitte was young and indomitable. The future was already gift wrapped for a slender boy from Athenry called Cloonan. The good times would roll again.
Except that they haven't. Every year can be logically explained away. From '94 to '96, Galway lost All-Ireland semi-finals to Offaly, Clare and Wexford, all of whom went on to claim the All-Ireland that season. In 1997 they got caught up in a DJ-inspired shoot-out against Kilkenny and from an unassailable half-time position, they finished smoked. A summer later in Croke Park, a vacuous half-hour against Waterford concluded their summer before it even began.
Maroon hats left the cathedral even before half-time that day. Then 1999 and a classic couple of hours against Clare; the draw was the game of the summer. Clare were sharper and smarter in the replay; 2000 was marked by a quietly positive quarter-final win against Tipperary but no more. And when a season later the two teams met in the All-Ireland final, Noel Lane's boys seemed to have been freed from the torpor and they went away from Croke Park that evening entitled to feel hopeful. There was never more than a stroke in it and there was light on the horizon.
And then last year, regression again. An infuriating, headless game against a Clare team playing on pride and class. Galway had the legs on their opponents but never used them. And now, in the summer just passed, an historic championship match in Pearse Stadium and another loss. Tipperary again this time, the quiet certainty of outcome masked by a stunning and poignant 90 seconds of Galway brilliance when the cause was already being waked. The most chilling aspect of that day was the sense of acceptance among the home crowd.
And throughout that time managers have been talked and walked. Great minor players entered the fickle world of Galway senior hurling and seemed to get vaporised. The abundance of under-age talent meant that one bad game, one conspicuous screw-up could consign a guy to the rubbish tip.
Meanwhile, talk of the crisis in hurling has sounded up anew. Leinster is not competitive. The new wave of Clare, Wexford and Offaly is greying and complains of dodgy hips. The city game is dying. But commentators are strangely silent on the Galway issue, as if it is too embarrassing to talk about out loud.
Hurling needs Galway to win again and soon. The sport has thrived against the odds in a football crazy province but it is beginning to look as if the Farrell years of the 1980s were an aberration instead of the announcement of a new force. Nobody can say with any certainty how Galway will perform in the championship next year. And nobody has been able to for years.
How long can the losing streak continue before it begins to bias the mindset of youngsters being taught the game? How long before the county resumes its status as also-rans? It seems as if Galway had the potential to enjoy a dynasty as rich as that which centred around Joe Cooney all those years ago. Galway ought to have been the rivals that the great Kilkenny team of today are searching for.
For some reason it hasn't happened. Maybe nobody is to blame. Maybe without the bloodlines and enmities that run through the provinces of Munster and Leinster, a county just cannot thrive. And perhaps the round table of Galway hurling are being foolish sticklers for refusing to chance their arm in the Leinster championship. But they thrived independently before and it is their right to believe they can do so again.
Meantime the years tick on and the game has had 15 seasons of Galway hurlers without a senior medal between them. And no white suit necessary to stand out at All-Star night anymore.
