Given that the last of this year's provincial titles were handed out last week, When Sunday Comes thought it was an appropriate time to put those wins in context. What makes it even more timely is the retirement of the manager of possibly the greatest Ulster championship team of all time, and the imminent retirement, surely, of the remaining survivors of Mayo's '96 and '97 All Ireland final teams.

Instead of looking at what they didn't win, it's not a bad idea to look at what they did win.

That's the thing. While we can all instantly recall how many All Irelands certain players might have won, we often have to think how many provincial titles they racked up. Take Jayo. We all know he won an All Ireland in '95 but where does his latest Leinster leave him?

To save you that bother, and properly salute some incredible medal hauls, When Sunday Comes duly presents the 15 current players with the most amount of provincial championship medals in football (see 'Local Heroes' panel, above).

Kilkenny's unwanted one per cent men Two men hold a unique, though far from coveted, place in the annals of Kilkenny hurling.

Of the 191 men who have hurled 10 championship games or more for that county, PJ Garvan and Jimmy Murphy are the only two never to have played in an All Ireland final.

Yes folks, 99 per cent of the men called on by the Kilkenny selectors 10 times or more have sampled All Ireland final action on the field of play.

The strong Wexford team of the '50s were a major factor in why neither Garvan nor Murphy saw action in September but Garvan twice suffered the heartache of hurling (and scoring) in the winning game prior to the final, picking off a point from wing forward in the 1950 Leinster final, and coming off the bench to score a goal in the 1957 decider. Those two games, as it happened, were his first and last games with the county.

At least Garvan got to win a few Leinsters though. Murphy didn't even manage that. He hurled eight consecutive games at wing forward through 1955, 1956 and 1957, then had a short two-game gap before two more outings in 1958. The galling thing was, those two games he took a breather for were the 1957 Leinster and All Ireland finals (see 'Final Straw' panel, left).

Inky lacked much to write home about Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary may be able to hone in on hurlers who never played in an All Ireland final but what about the perseverance of a man who played championship hurling for 18 years and never won a match?

Enter Galway's MJ 'Inky' Flaherty, who lined out in his beloved maroon for the first time in the All Ireland semi-final of 1936, scoring two goals against Limerick in Roscrea, a game that was abandoned with 15 minutes to go.

Flaherty went on to hurl for Galway through the remainder of the '30s, '40s and early '50s, suffering defeat in All Ireland semi-final after All Ireland semi-final.

Many of those setbacks were truly galling, eight of them by two points or less. In 1953 though, Galway finally got on the right side of a close game and won a semi-final, beating Kilkenny by a point. Would you believe it, Inky, by then in his late 30s, was left off the team. He was brought on alright for the final against Cork but, you guessed it, Galway lost by four points.

With that, Inky's 17-game intercounty career ended without a solitary win.

But hey, he got to play in an All Ireland final. A lot of other players haven't.

Tipperary see lots of action, little satisfaction As the above table shows, while only two Kilkenny players capped 10 times or more have failed to play in an All Ireland final, 18 Tipperary players hold that distinction. Interestingly, half of them could still play in one this year (see 'Starved of a Stage' panel, left).

Betcha don't know this now. . .

We'll keep you waiting next week to reveal the three Cork hurlers capped 10 times or more who never even played in an All Ireland final, but for now, we'll leave you with two questions, one hurling, one football, which are answered below.

Question One: Ten years ago Kilkenny and Galway also clashed in an All Ireland quarter-final in the first year of the backdoor. Can you recall who guarded the net for both counties?

Question Two: Of the 15 current players with the most number of senior provincial football medals, as listed above, how many of them have yet to win an All Star?

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