As our tables show, Galway's Alan Kerins, Eugene Cloonan and Damien Hayes are all in double figures when it comes to championship goalscoring but the majority of those goals . . . and all of Kerins's . . . were against Division Two or Three teams.

A few years ago John Mullane looked like being one of the first great goalscorers of the 21st century but his goal against Cork in last month's Munster semi-final was only the second time since his famous hat-trick and two fingers against the same county in 2003 that he found the net against top-nine opposition in championship. His pal, Dan The Man, had scored 13 in the interim.

In Cork, Joe Deane has settled for just being a great point-taker. Alan Browne scored a few crucial goals, like one in the 1998 league final, but even he couldn't reach double figures in championship.

Tipperary's Eugene O'Neill could have been a contender if he had kept playing after 2003 but he didn't so he isn't. Nicky English played well into the '90s but, a bit like Prince, he was by then only a shadow of the artist of the decade he had been in the '80s. Eoin Kelly's reputation as a great scorer is long secure but he's still short of being a great goalscorer, even if his 18 league goals to date should also be taken into account. Lar Corbett knows where the net is . . . in the 2003 league alone he rattled in nine goals . . . but he's yet to do enough in championship.

For now, the best goalscorer on the Tipperary team is John Carroll, who having been moved to the forwards since the 2001 All Ireland semi-final, has gone on to score 10 championship goals in his last 27 games.

And they've all come against top-nine opposition and all in big games (three of them in All Ireland semifinals, three of them in All Ireland quarter-finals and three of them against Limerick). For a man who has been in and out of the team this past four seasons, it's an impressive haul. In fact, only one other half-forward this decade can rival that return.

But that half forward is in a special group of six players who are well removed from their rivals when it comes to finding that net in the nineties and noughties.

6 EDDIE BRENNAN
Kilkenny

It's actually only since he's stopped scoring goals that he's finally secured the total confidence of Brian Cody. But prior to his move to wing-forward Brennan was a phenomenal goalscorer, thanks to possessing blistering pace and a rocket of a shot.

Although he was either a sub or subbed in every game in his first three championships, Brennan still managed to bang in five goals in that limited playing time. Then he went on an incredible run, finding the net in eight of his next 11 championship games. The fact that two of those blanks came in All Ireland finals against Cork marred . . . and in some quarters, overshadowed . . . that record, but it was still an awesome run.

How lethal a goalscorer was he around then?

Well, it was Brennan who was the man to finally beat the inspired Brendan Cummins in that unforgettable one-sided game of hurling pinball in the 2003 All Ireland semi-final. It's odd though. His brace against Galway in the 2005 All Ireland semifinal was the first time he ever scored more than one goal in a championship game, and he's never found the net in championship since.

Hottest streak He scored in 14 of his first 21 championship games, even though for 14 of those games he was either a sub or was subbed.

Greatest hit That 2003 scud missile that even Cummins couldn't stop.

5 HENRY SHEFFLIN
Kilkenny

He's not called King Henry just because he's handy at the points. Shefflin is a brilliant finisher . . . as well as provider . . . of goals, averaging a goal every two championship games.

We can't forget his league record either. He's scored 25 goals this past eight leagues . . . and remember, his only start in this year's league was in the final, the year before he only played in the semi-final and final (bagging 3-9), while he missed large chunks of the 2001 and 2005 season too.

Hottest streak From his goal in the 2002 All Ireland final to the 2004 All Ireland final, Shefflin scored 10 championship goals in 11 games.

Greatest hit Last year's Leinster final, when he doubled on a Martin Comerford lay-off to hit the roof of the net.

4 PAUL FLYNN
Waterford

The only current player in the leading 20 goalscorers of all-time, a tribute to his surprising longevity as much as his potency. Not since Keher has there been a better goalscoring freetaker; in fact, there probably hasn't been one since Rackard or Ring.

Eleven of Flynn's 23 championship goals to date have come from frees or penalties, with three Munster finals changing on that ferocious deadball of his. He's lightened up many an overcast Sunday in February and March the same way too, as his stat of 38 league goals from play or frees shows.

Of course, he's been infuriating, but he's still managed to find the net from play in over 40 per cent of his championship games. He's arguably the greatest first-round championship player of the last 20 years while no one in that time has scored against, or terrorised, Cork so often.

Hottest streak In 2002 and 2003 he found the net in five consecutive championship games . . . including a hat-trick against Limerick.

Greatest hit The famous 'dipper' in the 2004 Munster final, or his ground shot against the same opposition in the same venue a year later which almost took Donal Og Cusack's head off.

3 JOHN FITZGIBBON
Cork

A fleeting star perhaps, but a star nonetheless.

And yet, at the start of 1990, you'd never have foreseen it. The previous summer the Glen Rovers man had been taken off, scoreless, in the Munster semi-final against Waterford, and had been dropped for the replay. About all he'd done in the first four years of his Cork career was score a goal in the 1986 Munster final, and even that hadn't been enough to feature in that year's All Ireland.

By the time Cork would again beat and play Galway in an All Ireland, Fitzgibbon was transformed, and would finish that summer of 1990 with six goals.

Not that, for all his Ring-like celebrations, he was that excited by his own exploits; when asked on television at that year's All Stars for his personal highlight of the year, Fitzgibbon replied, "Seeing Graceland."

Fitzgibbon would score another five championship goals over the coming two years, helping Cork get back to another All Ireland final before he just drifted away to go to the States and start a family and run marathons and climb mountains. By the time he left, he'd thumped in 14 goals in just 18 championship games for Cork. Ringy would have been proud.

Hottest streak Between 1990 and 1992, he rattled in 11 goals. And within that spell? Well two goals in 90 seconds in the '90 All Ireland final wasn't bad going.

Greatest hit He'd be appalled if we didn't pick one against his 'beloved' Tipperary, so his bullet of a ground stroke on the turn in the 1991 drawn Munster final it is.

2 DAN SHANAHAN
Waterford

If anyone had foreseen a few years ago Dan Shanahan would be the first great goalscorer of the 21st century, that someone would have been kindly escorted to the nearest asylum. But then Dan before 2004 and Dan since 2004 are two different people, like Saul to Paul, the league final that year his Damascus. Taking his career as a whole, 16 goals in 34 championship games is still hugely impressive but to score all 16 of those goals in his last 17 games is staggering, a rate of scoring hurling hasn't known since Joe McKenna packed it in.

To fully capture how phenomenal this achievement and renaissance is, let us remind you that he's scored at least one goal in every Munster championship match he's started for Justin McCarthy. Of course, he had to wait until his third season for that privilege, but once he did, Shanahan repaid him with a hat-trick against Clare. Now his total is 13 goals (and nine points) in seven Munster championship games. That's basically two goals a game, the average number of goals 30 players combined now score in a Munster championship game. Back in the '40s and '50s, the average was six and seven goals a game. As good as he was, Ring couldn't score that.

True, All Ireland semi-finals haven't quite gone Dan's way (yet), but any man who's scored a goal in his last two All Ireland quarter-finals, grabbed the goal that changed this year's league semi-final and has racked up 4-6 in his last two Munster finals is an undisputed big-game player.

How has he done it? A combination of aerial power, athleticism, ingenious off-the-ball movement, inspired decision-making and stickwork, and sheer persistence and heart. And then there's the celebrations . . . the raised arm, the clutching of the crest, the jumping to the terraces which once mocked him but now adore him. No one has had more fun scoring goals and no one has been such fun to watch scoring them.

Hottest streak Well, the 7-7 he scored in 2004 between that year's league final to that year's Munster final was good going.

Greatest hit For all the hat-tricks against Clare and Limerick and numerous goals against Cork, his best two efforts were probably both against Tipp last year: the first in Munster in Pairc Ui Chaoimh where he won a puckout and soloed 30 yards before drilling it into the bottom corner, and the other in the All Ireland quarter-final when he drifted in behind the Tipp defence to again beat Cummins.

1 DJ CAREY
Kilkenny

It was a close call, whether to give this top spot to DJ or Dan. Dan has scored two hat-tricks in championship; DJ never claimed even one. But the thing is, Dan's only been doing the goal thing for three or four years. DJ did it for more than 15. Dan reserves his goals for the summer; DJ was rattling the net in the wet and the mud too. And that's just at senior intercounty level. Before that, he did it with the minors and with St Kieran's. As Denis Walsh wrote in Hurling: The Revolution Years, he was always the man and always a marked man. There was never a time he was just another player. For a long time, that's all Dan was.

In that way, DJ was like Ring. Part of what made him great was that he was both a great goalscorer and a scorer of great goals. Dan's goals are beautiful because his story is but they aren't art. So many of Carey's were.

There was something primal, nearly animalistic, about his finishing. While the other outstanding forward of the late '90s, Jamesie O'Connor, was a pure pence man, Carey was the ultimate pound man. In 57 championship games, he only scored 57 points from play. But he averaged a goal from play every second game, and banged in eight deadballs too.

Goals were his lifeblood and he passed on to Shefflin and Brennan the principle that they're worth more than three points. Carey didn't score any of Kilkenny's three goals in the second half of the 2003 All Ireland semi-final yet the selector Johnny Walsh recalls that they each had Carey's fingermarks all over them. "'There's goals there, ' DJ said. 'We'll bury them.' It was his call. He put it into their mind."

Because he knew a goal could do the mind of an opponent. "When DJ scores a goal, " O'Connor observed after the 2002 All Ireland final, "it's nearly worth two."

That 2002 final was the third All Ireland in which Carey struck a goal; as heavily scrutinised and criticised as Carey's All Ireland final day record was, it's overlooked his goalscoring rate was still more prolific than Ring's on the biggest day. You can't say he bumped up his figures against the likes of Dublin and Laois either; he was far more explosive against Offaly. Between 1991 and 2000, probably the greatest decade in that county's history, Carey took their defence for 12 goals in eight championship games, the only time he drew a blank against them being the 1998 All Ireland final. What literally separated DJ from the rest was his pace and his ability to shoot so hard while running at that pace.

Time might tell that Shefflin was a better hurler and that Keher was the better scorer but Carey was the modern game's ultimate goalscorer.

Hottest streak After failing to find the net in that '98 All Ireland final, he rattled it nine times in his next eight championship games, steering Kilkenny to two All Ireland finals and one All Ireland title in the process Greatest hit We could be here all day. For the club, probably the one in the 1996 county final. For Kilkenny, his catch, quick step and bullet that changed the 2000 All Ireland semi-final. And the 1999 semi-final.

And very nearly the 1997 semi-final too.