All-Ireland SH Final/ Countdown: Seán Moran visits the Lory Meagher centre, which is short on information on a reticent early Kilkenny hurling superstar but big on artefact and culture

For a cultural organisation the GAA has left an awful lot to chance over the years. Little historical material was kept and the result is an impoverished archive. Who gets remembered or commemorated is often a matter of caprice.

The situation has improved with the establishment of the GAA museum in Croke Park and local initiatives like Lár na Páirce in Thurles and the Lory Meagher Centre, Bród Tullaroan, in Kilkenny.

In comparison to other icons Meagher is low-key. Despite the efforts of his home club in Tullaroan little is known of him nationally beyond his place in the hurling pantheon. Dan Hogan, his nephew and closest male descendant, frets a little over his uncle's legacy and how his memory hasn't been projected onto posterity's big screen. It was because of this that he offered the Meagher home as a memorial at the beginning of the 1990s.

On reflection, the local committee decided to make an offer for the surrounding outhouses and yard, which were purchased for £27,000. But Dan Hogan still muses about his ambition for a book to set down something about Lory Meagher.

Unfortunately that project is compromised by the lack of material. Meagher was a reluctant interviewee and virtually nothing of him survives in contemporary media. There are no films nor broadcast conversations. In his later life he used be accompanied to matches by a reporter from the Kilkenny People, who respected the confidentiality of that arrangement.

There are tributes. Irish Press writer Pádraig Puirséal described him as a "supreme stylist". Known as the "Prince of Hurlers" and "King Lory", he was renowned for his overhead striking and credited with pioneering lifting the ball in defiance of contemporary urgency and the imperative "to let it fly". At centrefield for most of his career, he also made the difference between winning and losing All-Irelands.

The 1931 final between Cork and Kilkenny went to two replays. It is probably the most important final of the 20th century in that it established hurling as a mass spectator sport, nearly doubling the crowds that had been attending hurling finals.

On a more intimate level, it was a terrible disappointment for Kilkenny, and for Meagher. He broke three ribs in the first replay and never stood a chance of playing in the decisive match. Encouraged to keep up appearances - there were fears the Kilkenny crowd wouldn't travel if they knew the truth about his injury - he boarded the train for the match with his boots slung over his shoulder. Confined to the sideline at Croke Park, he wept as Cork drove to the championship.

But he had a happier experience the following year, saving his best performance of the season for the final victory over Clare, and contemporary accounts describe his display in the 1935 final as "masterly".

Even other worlds were interested. One piece of folklore has it that when spirits wished to play hurling matches they would whisk away Meagher as the gifted mortal slept and return him before morning when he would wake having dreamed of his twilight exploits.

The house is that of a well-to-do farming family. Built in the late 17th century, it was found to be carrying nearly four feet of thatch when renovations started in 1991. The peat roof uncovered in one of the bedrooms and held in place by branches is the original structure - 300 years on. Unusually, it also features an oratory upstairs.

The last of the Meagher family, sisters of Lory, lived here until 1986.

Myra Reid is a committee member and one of the project's founders. She remembers how the the idea took flight with public funds from Fás and European supporter from the LEADER programme.

"Hurling's like a religion here," she says in the GAA Museum and, giving weight to what can be a cliché, ponders it further. "It really is, you know."

A Clare woman, she has lived in Tullaroan with her Dublin husband for 30 years, loves the place and has been involved in Bród Tullaroan from the start. She's still one of the rota of volunteers who conduct tours on wintry, out-of-season Sundays. If you book a coach tour, the local children will play a hurling exhibition down at the club.

It seems only yesterday that Tommy Walsh was one of the exhibits but next Sunday he plays in his second senior All-Ireland.

Gathered in the coffee shop is a high-powered delegation from the Tullaroan club. They are ranged around a table all courteous animation in the face of a relative blizzard of media demand: Dick Walsh (The Church) and Dick Walsh the club chairman, his father Chris, Dan Hogan, Paddy Clohossey, brother of 1963 All-Ireland captain Seán, and Eamonn Holland.

Taking their cue from the odd question they converse brightly across each other. Dates, facts and figures, conversation and opinion buzz around the room. Hurling may or may not be a religion here but it has no difficulty monopolising conversation at this time of the year.

They recall less urgent media coverage, how the first that was read of the 1935 All-Ireland victory was the following Friday when a child was dispatched to collect the Kilkenny People. Then there was the farmer milking cows in 1942 who had to enquire who had won the previous day's All-Ireland. To be strictly fair it should be pointed out that this was a football final.

About the upcoming match there's a cheerfully stoic air. "Sure it won't be the end of the world." This isn't indifference but a sense of proportion in a parish which has nurtured hurling since the dawn of the GAA and will continue to do so whatever happens at inter-county level.

Lory Meagher floats easily through the conversation: how he dominated the club up until his death in 1973, how scrupulous he was about doing the right thing; Dan Hogan says he would "step aside" from a team selection rather than be seen to favour his nephew.

Lorenzo Meagher was born on May 25th, 1899. The exotic first name came from a forebear who had worked as a naval doctor. His father's family came from Tipperary (baldly stated and left at that). Henry J was a founding father of the GAA who headed for the inaugural meeting in Thurles in a pony and trap but his presence went unrecorded.

But there's no doubting his status in the early association. A local councillor, he was a sports enthusiast even if his days of participation were over. Athletics and cricket were his main interests and reports of him playing the former have survived in the Kilkenny People. In fact the Tullaroan jersey was originally a cricket white with a patriotic green sash over it.

The club is celebrating the centenary of its own piece of history. The 1904 All-Ireland was Kilkenny's first and won by a side largely comprising players from county champions Tullaroan with one or two players from other clubs. Given the chaotic scheduling of the era the match didn't actually take place until 1906 but the centenary was marked this year anyway with a challenge match between the club and their opponents all those decades ago in Carrick-on-Suir, St Finbarr's from Cork.

Meagher arrived at a bleak period for the county. Kilkenny's early impact in the championship, seven All-Irelands in 11 years, had abated when his inter-county career began in 1924. There was family history made in 1926 when three brothers, Lory, Bill and Henry, lined out in the All-Ireland final against Cork.

Credited with driving the Tullaroan team that inspired the county's resurgence in the 1930s Meagher was getting old by that time and like the century, in his fourth decade. He was still able to win three medals and captain the 1935 side that, despite an advancing age profile, beat a young Limerick team defending the All-Ireland and already embarked on the greatest phase in the county's history.

His final appearance was in the final everyone in Kilkenny would rather forget, as a replacement in the 1937 All-Ireland, won crushingly by Tipperary.

On theclub ground beside the playing field is an enclosure where trees commemorate all who contributed to the GAA in the county. Behind the Meagher Centre is another tree-planting project. Every county hurler who dies is commemorated with a tree.

Every so often a ceremony for the recently deceased and their families takes place.

The past may be another country but we should visit it every so often.

* Tours of the Lory Meagher centre take place daily until the end of September and on Sunday afternoons during the winter. For groups, coaches and school tours see the website www.brodtullaroan.com.