When McMahon was visited by the invaluable hurling historian Brendan Fullam 15 years ago, he claimed he never left a hurling field without scoring at least one goal. He was a tiny bit out . . . in three of his 20 championship matches he failed to find the net . . . but the fact he found it in the 17 others means he has the second highest goals-to-games ratio in the last 80 years (see Table 4).

From the start McMahon's goalscoring was phenomenal. Originally hailing from a junior club, Kildimo, he had to wait until he was 24 for his first game with Limerick, a league match against Dublin.

He duly scored five goals that day, and would go on to score 22 championship goals in just 20 games before a knee injury ended his career.

To this day no player has matched or equalled his record of finding the net in nine consecutive Munster championship games (Jimmy Barry-Murphy is next on eight, with Dan The Man and Charlie McCarthy on seven), while only those fellow goal machines, Tony Doran and Nickey Rackard, have equalled his record of scoring in 12 consecutive championship games . . . and even then he eclipses them, scoring 22 goals in that streak to their 20 and 19 respectively.

5 CHRISTY RING
Cork

The game's greatest ever player, in no small part because he was both a great goalscorer and a scorer of great goals. While his All Ireland final scoring rate was DJ-esque, only Mackey has scored more goals in Munster finals (13 goals in 12 finals, to Ring's 12 goals in 19 deciders).

Ring actually has the lowest goals-to-game ratio of any of the 20 leading championship goalscorers but what makes him so exceptional is his sheer longevity. His hottest goalscoring streak actually came after he won the last of his eight All Irelands, as he notched 14 goals in his 12 championship games from 1956 to 1961. Do the sums . . . he was on that run from the age of 36 to 41. It's safe to say we'll never again see a fortysomething score a hat-trick in a league final like he did against Tipp in 1960.

And that's just inter-county. When he was 39 he scored 4-5 in a Railway Cup final (a competition in which he scored 42 goals in 44 games). At 42 he scored a hat-trick in the last 15 minutes of the county semi-final to inspire the Glen to yet another county title.

And there was the timing and majesty of the goals. Like the famous solo runs in the 1944 Munster finals and 1946 All Ireland, or his hat-trick in the last 10 minutes of the '56 Munster final. The inscription of his statue in Cloyne could easily have read like Michael Jordan's in Chicago: "The best there ever was. The best there'll ever be."

4 DJ CAREY
Kilkenny
See next page

3 EDDIE KEHER
Kilkenny

The greatest scorer in hurling history and one of its greatest goalscorers too. Just look at all the tables in this section. Only one man has scored more goals in All Ireland finals than him. Only two men have scored more championship goals. In 1976 alone he found the net 20 times in 18 competitive games. Just think about that; he was 36 by then. A year later he retired, having racked up an incredible 211 goals (and 1,426 points) in 298 games for his county.

What made Keher so prolific was that he was so deadly from frees. While he scored 19 championship goals from open play, another 16 came from deadballs. Only Rackard and Ring previously had that kind of accuracy and power.

2 TONY DORAN
Wexford

The ultimate pound man. Put it this way, Doran played 23 championship games in Croke Park and scored 22 goals and 'only' 28 points, and played 17 championship games elsewhere and scored 19 goals.

From the start he was a goal machine, scoring at least one goal in 14 of his first 16 championship games.

Amazingly, he never scored a hat-trick in championship play but there was no better man to get two goals a game. Twelve times he reached that quota in the championship, and in one streak, went six consecutive games scoring a pair of goals.

He was a particular thorn for Kilkenny, scoring 14 goals in 17 games against them. But then, there was no county he played that he failed to find the net against. He was 7-9 from seven games against Offaly, 611 from five games against Dublin, 4-2 in three All Ireland semi-finals against Galway, 4-0 in three All Irelands against Cork and scored 2-1 in the 1968 All Ireland win over Tipp.

Eddie Keher has often spoken about "the anticipation he [Doran] created for both sets of supporters every time a ball was sent soaring towards the square". Sure, a good few of those balls Doran claimed were eventually palmed to the net, but such was his strength, talent and mentality, he'd have just found another way to feed his habit.

How did he get a taste for such a habit? Well, as a kid, all he ever wanted to do was model himself on another Wexford man. . .

1 NICKEY RACKARD
Wexford

Ray Cummins was a fine, fine player, and not a bad goalscorer either, finding the net in 19 of his 35 championship appearances, yet it remains one of the wonders of the new millennium . . . how did he get in ahead of Nickey Rackard as the full-forward for the team of the old millennium?

On two grounds alone he should have been an automatic choice. One, his achievement with Wexford, transforming a predominantly footballoriented county into the leading hurling county in Ireland in the mid-'50s. And two, the simple fact he was the greatest exponent of the sport's most precious art . . . scoring goals.

The statistics speak for themselves. First, he leads the way in total championship goals, scoring a phenomenal 60 goals in just 35 championship games, 44 of them from play, 16 from deadballs. In 1956 alone, in which Wexford won the league and All Ireland double, he scored 12 goals in four championship games and found the net 23 times in his other 15 inter-county games. As his brother Billy once told Fullam, "Nickey was a goal addict."

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