These are parlous times for hurling's netminders. Tom Humphrieslooks at what has been an exceptional sequence of downs and downs for several big names

When Christy O'Connor sat down to think of a title for his justly acclaimed book on hurling goalkeepers, the perfect tome for what has been a golden time in the history of that odd vocation, he came up with words Last Man Standing. He can hardly have intended that in so short a space of time we would be able to interpret the title literally.

In goalkeeping terms this has been The Year of the Plague. Liam O'Donoghue smited by Loughnane. Brendan Cummins laid low by Babs. Donal Óg comes down with a bad case of the DRAs. Davy Fitz goes into the wilderness, where he loiters yet.

James McGarry watches PJ Ryan play in goal for Kilkenny and wonders will the All Star selectors have the dark and bitter wit to give PJ an All Star gong on his first season out. Even Brian Mullins of Offaly spent the winter in Coventry.

Damien Fitzhenry, an island of serenity amidst all this, is paying a minder to to keep an eye out for solitary magpies and help avoid dangers such as walking under ladders or having a black cat cross his path. Were we in a horror film we would be hollering at Fitzhenry to stay indoors and not take any calls.

The All-Ireland champions weren't the trailblazers in this culling business, but the case of James McGarry is interesting.

Underrated to the point where his lack of an All Star award has become a prominent biographical feature, he has lost out this year in the traditional Kilkenny game of musical chairs. PJ Ryan played through the league. McGarry got a start in a challenge in late April versus Laois. When the music stopped for the championship, though, James McGarry hadn't got a seat.

Kilkenny train at 7.30pm of an evening when they do train (club fare has taken precedence since the Offaly game). This past while James McGarry has been showing up at 6.30pm, practising early. He has been seen in the alleys at St Kieran's. The pressure the goalies apply to each other is phenomenal.

McGarry plays outfield for his club, Bennetsbridge, which hasn't given him a shop window in recent times. Ryan, hovering at the 30 mark (a minor back in 1995), has waited a long time for his chance and is yet to make an error. We watch with interest.

In Tipp the joke is that Babs has had the boys out training with greyhounds this week, teaching them how to hold on to leads. Under the humour lies the intriguing subplot. Cummins and Babs. A dispute over puck-outs, we are told. Two men with an acute sense of their place in the Tipperary pantheon going nose to nose.

One dropping seems tragic. Babs lived to fight another day last week. All the chips are on the table again tomorrow. Two weeks running with such high stakes? Somebody is going to be left with permanent scars.

Ask Tony Considine. Or Davy Fitz. Things turned Balkan in Clare quite some time ago. The county is one of those regions whose feuds and politics are baffling to all but the most advanced of students.

But the goalkeeping position and the furore over it is one of those feuds about which it is easy to form an opinion. Amidst all the smoke and shrapnel, Tony Considine versus Davy Fitz was easy to understand. Davy Fitz is one of those figures who become emblematic of a county.

In a time when Clare wasn't short of emblematic players he was always the one most likely to keep on keeping on. Other players might kiss the crest. Fitzy would have married it if he could.

In Clare and beyond its borders you found Davy Fitz and his proclamations of love for the Banner to be either intensely inspiring or intensely irritating, depending on how much milk you liked in your tea.

It was understandable, though, that he should fall out with Tony Considine. The new manager came out of the wild Loughnane years with a reputation about as scary as that of a lounge singer at a mafia convention. He was the least feared and the most approachable figure in that whole tinderbox.

Anthony Daly had managed to keep a lid on Davy Fitz and continued to get the best out of him. When Considine banged the table for the first time the stakes were high. Davy Fitz had a reputation not just for ebullient excellence but for weight at county-board level. If Considine was to be his own man, taming the keeper would be his biggest challenge.

They butted like stags in the glen. Davy Fitz doesn't walk the same heather anymore. Tony Considine feels the sights of many hunters' rifles on his hide though. One shot, as De Niro said in The Deerhunter. One shot.

Then Donal Óg fell.

Not permanently, but surprisingly.

In the past few years Donal Óg has become the poster person for perfect, composed, pre-match preparation, going so far as to take leave from work on the Wednesdays and Thursdays of weeks involving championship matches.

It has become the custom for players in many counties to take an ice bath after games. Donal Óg gives his brain an ice bath before games. To find him accused of roughhousing in the tunnel, of mixing it with the rough boys? To see him suspended? One more act of a bizarre summer drama.

For Liam Donoghue love is a complex thing. He was on his honeymoon when the National Hurling League started. One presumes he didn't get married and go on honeymoon out of spite.

It was just that honeymoon is not where you want to be when Ger Loughnane is starting work as your new boss. Not when Ger has sat in the Berkeley Court Hotel at a press conference telling the scribbling world how he wants to win the National League. Not when Ger is recharged and full of the elemental energies that drive him.

Loughnane not only likes to get the best out of both ends of the broom, but he sweeps the places other people wouldn't think of sweeping. Liam Donoghue, captain of Galway for the last two years, including in the 2005 All-Ireland final, and probably the most reliable goalkeeper Galway have had since John Commins (maybe, depending on your view of John Commins, the best since Michael Conneelly), might have thought his work under four senior managers in Galway since wining an All-Ireland minor medal back in 1992 might have granted him an amnesty, enough leeway for a honeymoon anyway.

Galway, though, is a tough beat for goalkeepers. Always has been.

Aidan Ryan came in (he'd played 10 minutes of championship last summer) and against Antrim on the opening day of the league made an outstanding save from Liam Watson early on. Ryan went on and made four appearances for Galway in the league.

Last year's minor goalkeeper James Skehill got one start. Donoghue got one start also.

He must look back on that day with the regrets of a man who pulled the short straw. Parnell Park in March. Conditions that would have forced Scott or Amundsen to turn back. Dublin playing with a fury that didn't help. Loughnane on the receiving end of the first setback. Liam Donoghue in goal.

He let in two, neither goal a clanger. Pádraig O'Driscoll latched on to a loose ball and whipped it home. Liam Ryan was granted space for a solo run, which he finished by kicking the ball home.

At the other end, Gary Maguire was heroic for Dublin though. That never helps a losing goalkeeper. But even Maguire commented afterwards on the conditions.

"I could hardy see the ball coming at me with the hail and the snow. It was bitterly cold. I could hardly feel my hands."

Maguire might have thought back then that he was addressing one of the more outlandish hazards of a goalkeeping life in dealing with hypothermia and snowblindness.

Little did he know what lay ahead for his brothers in nets.

The Big Guys

Davy Fitzgerald (Clare)

Age: 35

SHC debut: 1990 (v Limerick)

SHC games: 60

Goals conceded: 65

Average per game: 1.08

Clean sheets: 20

All-Irelands: 2

All Stars: 3

Currently: Off panel

Brendan Cummins (Tipp)

Age: 32

SHC debut: 1995 (v Waterford)

SHC games: 47

Goals conceded: 61

Average per game: 1.3

Clean sheets: 13

All-Irelands: 1

All Stars: 3

Currently: Sub

James McGarry (Kilkenny)

Age: 34

SHC debut: 1999 (v Laois)

SHC games: 34

Goals conceded: 30

Average per game: 0.9

Clean sheets: 14

All-Irelands: 4

All Stars: 0

Currently: Sub

Liam Donoghue (Galway)

Age: 32

SHC debut: 2003 (v Clare)

SHC games: 14

Goals conceded: 24

Average per game: 1.7

Clean sheets: 2

All-Irelands: 0

All Stars: 0

Currently: Off panel

Donal Óg Cusack (Cork)

Age: 30

SHC debut:1999 (v Waterford)

SHC games: 35

Goals conceded: 34

Average per game: 0.97

Clean sheets: 13

All-Irelands: 3

All Stars: 2

Currently: Suspended

Damien Fitzhenry (Wexford)

Age: 34

SHC debut: 1993 (v Dublin)

SHC games: 41

Goals conceded: 58

Average per game: 1.41

Clean sheets: 7

All-Irelands: 1

All Stars: 2

Currently: Playing