GAELIC GAMES:IN THE very first All-Ireland senior hurling championship, Limerick were drawn against the representatives of Kilkenny.

After a heated disagreement over which Limerick club should represent the county, two sides were allowed to travel – apparently with instructions to play each other first, with the winner taking on Tullaroan.

The two clubs, however, couldn’t decide on what to do and both returned to Limerick without having hit a ball – thus allowing Kilkenny free passage to an All-Ireland semi-final meeting with Tipperary.

Perhaps had the Limerick hurlers known how few (just seven) titles the county would claim in the following 124 years, they might have come to some understanding that would have allowed one of the sides a crack at the first national hurling crown.

Henry Martin's latest offering – Mick Mackey: Hurling Legend in a Troubled County(The Collins Press, €17.99) – on the greatest hurler to every wear a Limerick jersey gives some explanation as to why a county with such undoubted talent running through its parishes has come to falter on so many occasions during the hottest months.

Controversy has been as ever-present as the linesmen at Limerick matches – club and intercounty.

Of those seven All-Ireland titles claimed by Limerick, three were secured in the first decades of the competition and three more by Mackey-led teams. The other has been Limerick’s one bright hurling spot in the last 70 years of senior championship fare.

The book is billed as a prequel to Unlimited Heartbreak, a book penned by the same author – though even the greatest hurler of his era cannot avoid the politics and controversy that has dogged Limerick from the first fixture.

And if Mackey was the best thing to every come out of Limerick – hurling or otherwise – chapter seven explains the worst, and blames the incident for setting hurling in the county back by decades.

In 1949, a player was fortunate to escape with his life after a clash between two bitter club rivals, as if there’s any other kind in Limerick club hurling. In Martin’s book, the trial at Limerick circuit court is recounted in fascinating detail (Mackey was a key witness) and the reader is left in no doubt as to the damage to the game which resulted from the incident and the aftermath.

If there was ever any doubt about Mackey’s brilliance, this book provides ample evidence to dispel it.

However, one can’t help but feel that, after reading a book about such a wonderful player – and a wonderful ambassador for the county and for hurling – there is much to shake one’s head at. Limerick hurling fans have good reason to wonder why they can’t get a break of the ball.

If the 1930s were the glory years for hurling in Limerick, then the late ’40s and early ’50s was when the Cork versus Tipperary rivalry established itself as, perhaps, the main rivalry in the sport.

Mackey had no equal in the 1930s.

However, when Cork and Tipperary lined up for the 1950 Munster final in Killarney, on one side was Christy Ring – who already had five of his eight All-Ireland medals secured – and on the other was John Doyle, who had only collected the first of his eight the previous summer.

If 50 per cent, no . . . five per cent, of what occurred in Killarney that day happened in a modern day championship encounter, the inquests that would follow would make the Moriarty Tribunal seem like a quick, brief and uncontroversial report.

Doyle, The Greatest Hurling Story Ever Told(Irish Sports Publishing, €15.99), delves into the day in great detail – the packing of the stadium, the trouble between supporters, between players, and, most worryingly of all, between players and supporters.

Views on Doyle off the pitch have been varied. Some found the legendary Tipperary hurler a difficult man to get on with, and similar descriptions are contained in John Harrington’s account of his life. But on the pitch, there’s only one view – that Doyle was one of the greatest, not just of his county, or his era, but of all time.

There are more than enough interesting facts contained between the covers to keep the attention of any hurling supporter. And for Waterford fans, perhaps the most interesting – and painful – is that Doyle first learned his hurling in Dungarvan.

What might have been?

GAA autobiographies can be quickly divided into two camps – those where the writer actually has something to say and those where they are simply happy to yerrah their way to a cheque.

Michael Duignan's Life, Death and Hurling(Irish Sports Publishing, €15.99) doesn't even wait until the first chapter to let you know into which category it falls.

The prologue is a full-on mea culpa in which Duignan lists off a succession of bar brawls and scrapes he was involved in before some of his close friends intervened to, essentially, tell him to cop himself on. That level of honesty sets the tone for the rest of the book.

The death of Duignan’s wife, Edel, after a long battle with cancer casts a shadow throughout and is unflinchingly detailed. As she gradually moves towards accepting her fate, her husband and two young sons must try to do likewise. The results are simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking.

The book manages to maintain this balancing act throughout, successfully shifting between tragedy and triumph, such as the scarcely believable 1998 season, when the “sheep in a heap” won the All-Ireland – although Duignan does take issue with the perception of that great Offaly team as a bunch who stepped onto the pitch off the bar stool, and only performed when they felt like it.

Either way, you’d have to be a brave sort to question Duignan’s dedication given some of the injuries he has played through over the years. Who even knew it was possible to fracture a testicle?

Declan Bogue's This Is Our Year – A Season on the Inside of a Football Championship(Ballpoint Press, €14.99) has already garnered a lot of air-time and column inches for having been the catalyst for Kevin Cassidy's removal from the Donegal squad, but it would be a shame if that was all it was remembered for.

The author’s real stroke of genius here – quite apart from how skilfully the stories are interweaved – was to convince a player or manager from every Ulster county to be completely frank with him.

With the occasional honourable exception, people with an ongoing involvement in the game just don’t tend to be this up-front.

The result is a terrific insight into the hopes, fears and mind-boggling dedication that goes into being an intercounty player.

Ryan McMenamin reveals his love of exchanging some pre-match niceties, Dick Clerkin talks of his mother calling him in tears after hearing her son being criticised on the radio, Mickey Conlan explains how he quit a job to aid his comeback, and the most caustic comments aimed at management have nothing to do with Donegal. In fact, Cassidy emerges from the book as exactly the type of guy you would want in your squad.

Philip O'Connor's A Parish Far From Home(Gill and Macmillan, €16.99) couldn't be further removed from the white-hot heat of the Ulster championship, concerned as it is with a group of ex-pats trying to start a Gaelic football team in Stockholm.

It’s a sweet reminder of the fact that while we admire the single-mindedness and talent of intercounty stars, most mere mortals play for enjoyment, and the sense of camaraderie and friendship that goes along with that.

While there are almost 3,000 GAA clubs in existence, over 400 of those are the ones located overseas, reassuring emigrants that they are never too far from home.