When this century is a little more jaded - when we can isolate our Gaelic stars on Playercam - we will probably have a more settled perspective on the brilliance of the current Kilkenny full-forward line. So persuasive has been their contribution to the All-Ireland champions' imperious route to tomorrow's All-Ireland semi-final that observers have struggled to categorise them. A number of distinguished commentators, including Wexford's Liam Griffin, have labelled the attacking unit as all but incomparable, a masterwork unique in the long history of the sport.

They make for a fascinating trio. In previous years, there was always the sense that DJ Carey thrived independently. Always the ultimate team player - he exacts as much joy from a measured assist as a sublime score - such was Carey's singular brilliance that the tendency was to isolate him, to evaluate him on his own unreachable terms. This is the first season that he has been studied as the component of an ingenious entity.

Both he and Henry Shefflin, the corner forward of the equation, appear to have tapped into a higher form of telepathy.

Yet the last of the trinity has threatened to make this summer his own. Charlie Carter is hurling with something approaching vengeance. Although Kilkenny's sweeping of Leinster was monotonously thorough, Carter's haul of 0-13 in the games against Offaly and Wexford have drawn breath. It is not so much the tally that has impressed as the strike-rate; his one failed conversion against Wexford was a save by the potential goalkeeper of the year, Damien Fitzhenry.

"We don't go out to hammer teams either," Carter mused in Kilkenny last Monday afternoon after picking up the Eircell player of the month for July. "It's just been working out that way."

If Charlie Carter had not been born in the same town and generation as DJ, then he would probably have been lauded more loudly and often. Schooling and hurling alongside the Chosen One cannot have been easy. Although Carter's stick-work and pace was of the quality to facilitate early deity - he formed a ridiculously-talented full-forward line with Carey and Adrian Ronan for Kilkenny's successful 1988 minor campaign - it was unlikely that he would follow Carey's sonic rate of development.

The subsequent disappointments are well documented. Drafted into the senior squad back in 1991, his future seemed to tailspin in the subsequent two seasons and when Kilkenny won the senior All-Ireland in 1993, Carter found himself taking frees for the junior county side that fell short in the All-Ireland final.

"I never asked any questions," Carter says of his demotion in later years. "You probably wouldn't have got any answers anyway. I might have got a bit cocky, I might have been away with the fairies, I don't know."

Countless sporting lives have foundered on such rebuffs, but Carter was too good and too stubborn to ever quit. Now, in his 11th season in the black and amber, he says that longevity has never been an issue for him.

"I would never have been happy doing anything less. I have always wanted to be on the intercounty stage and I have always enjoyed it. If I had to pack it in tomorrow, there is very little I would change.

"This year has been a little more difficult. My daughter Nicole is 13 months old and it's hard on Marie when I'm going out training four and five nights a week. Fortunately, she understands, she knows the score, otherwise it would be impossible. I have enjoyed my time, but I'd love to get another medal or two to polish the thing off."

An explosive crowd-pleasing force on match days, the stoicism with which Carter has accepted the setbacks still form the basis for self-evaluation. On that miserable September Sunday in 1999 when Kilkenny, four points to the good with 10 minutes left, fell apart as Jimmy Barry-Murphy's young Cork team drove for the All-Ireland, Carter was called ashore early.

Having hit two points he was nonplussed and that his exit was followed by Cork's charge anguished him. So he is naturally cautious in these weeks, when all seems sweet.

"Look, there's days you go out and the ball will fall for you and it goes over for you and other days it doesn't. The supply to us has been good for the last few matches and hopefully that will continue on Sunday. It can go a small bit wide as handy," he says.

Kilkenny manager Brian Cody agrees that Carter is probably enjoying the finest phase of his sporting life.

"He has turned in two massive performances for us with a phenomenal scoring rate. Sport being the way it is, it's not about the last day, it's always about the next day you go out and you can never legislate for what will happen."

Kilkenny's greatest feat of the past three years is that the hurt and pressure of the '98/'99 All-Ireland losses were never allowed fester into disillusionment or recrimination. Although the axing of manager Kevin Fennelly post-1998 was merciless, Kilkenny's monastic application has made their return to the pinnacle inevitable.

"Those losses are the motivation now. It is simple," reckons Carter. "All teams need a reason to drive them and that is ours. We lost two, now we want to win two. It was bad - maybe not 1998 so much because we were a coming team then, just after taking our first Leinster championship in five years, but in 1999, well maybe the build-up and the fact that it was a wet day combined and it didn't click. But we have matured a lot as a team through those experiences."

Carter's stunning form is all the more notable given reports of apathy that emerged in the winter. His absence for a league fixture against Wexford vented rumour that the small tormentor had had enough.

"It was just a week. I wasn't enjoying it and I asked Brian for a week off and he said 'no problem'. The media got wind of it and made a big deal of it, saying myself and Cody had a row. It was never like that. I just needed to take a chill pill as the man says. I always said if things weren't going well I'd sit back, talk myself through it and decide if I wanted to come back. A week later, I was at training and I have been hungry for it since."

That has been all too evident. But Carter can only see the weeks ahead as a minefield. His effervescence is tempered by hard experience and he refuses to be seduced by the avid notes that the Kilkenny forward line has generated to date. It would simply be too dangerous.

"It is an honour to be described of in those terms, it truly is. But forward lines come and go. Ten years ago, there was another great forward line and in a decade's time there will be another," he says.