Sometimes we joyless hacks just don't get the point. Strange sporting week. On Sunday I attended the last championship game that the Clare hurlers would play this decade, century, millennium, whatever, and probably the last championship game that that particular group would play as well. They aren't old in man years, but they are venerable in hurler years and parts need replacing.

Then on Friday I was in Wrigley Field, Chicago when Sammy Sosa hit two home runs which constituted the only bright spots on another miserable day for the local Chicago Cubs baseball outfit.

Slammin' Sammy you will recall was the more likeable part of the double act (Mark McGwire was the other) which entranced America last summer with their home-run race which finished with both players eclipsing the home-run record set by Roger Maris back in the 1960s. There aren't many similarities between Clare and the Cubs, but their respective relationships with the media that cover them are one. It has become fashionable in print circles since the crazy summer of 1998 (Colin Lynch's unfortunate granny et al) to be snide about the Clare hurlers and in the press bunker last Sunday there was some sniggering about the fate of the losers. It's long been a sign of weakness to be "soft on Clare" and it has been pointed out that in this regard I'm no John Wayne.

Relations between sections of the media and the Clare team have been rancid over the last 18 months, which is a pity because the media's self-absorption with the sniping war has meant that Clare haven't been given the credit they were due either for their longevity or for the remarkable good grace with which they took the outcome of the Jimmy Cooney business last summer.

It was a silly war. Ger Loughnane went over the top in the summer of 1998 and great and pious was the breast-beating in the fourth estate, whose professional code demands the prompt expulsion and blackballing of any member who makes a similar journey.

Clare began naming phoney teams on the Tuesday or Thursday of big game weeks and even though a Sunday has never yet passed without cupla fogra relating to changes on the announced teams, we took this more blatant deception as a hurtful slight on our sacred vocation. Finally, several scribes not in favour with the ruling powers in Clare were sent on wild goose chases by disgruntled Claremen. Mileage is no consolation in those irritating circumstances.

Sad. In becoming wrapped up in the exasperating personality wars, we in the media missed the point and failed entirely to place Clare in their proper perspective. We got the critical balance wrong. People enjoyed Clare and what they brought to hurling, the good they did far outweighed the bruising left by any wild pulls across the shins of the media .

Clare drew criticism, not all of it related to how they played games or spurred by the purest of journalistic motives. Meanwhile other counties were indulged and cajoled. In terms of the things we are supposed to be looking out for on our media precinct, Clare had a clean bill of health. They were the best thing to happen to hurling in a long, long time. Their historical impact may ultimately not be more important than that which attended the arrival of Galway and Offaly in the early 1980s, but they were more fun and more colourful. Clare were that rare thing, a team composed almost entirely of big characters and a manager incapable of uttering anything but good copy.

Their decline through these past two grand operatic seasons has been a magnificent spectacle, a team fighting against it's own waning appetite. The All-Ireland final pairings both years have been satisfactory, but the anticipation has been diminished somewhat by the absence of Clare.

And the media loses out too. Cork and Kilkenny, even with their sheaves of young talents, is a pairing entirely without novelty or romance. You put all the guys from the Cork and Kilkenny panels in a room and you can pick out fewer interesting interviews than you'd get in jerseys one to nine on the Clare side. Factor in the crippling paranoia which will clasp Kilkenny and Cork mouths shut and you're missing Clare already.

We aren't the only media to have missed the point though. In Wrigley Field on Friday for an afternoon game between two poxed teams, the Chicago Cubs and the Colorado Rockies, they were selling tickets for standing room only. The Cubs duly lost their 22nd game of the last 27 and the visitors from Denver held a press conference during the game to announce the resignation of their general manager. Nobody cared.

Sammy Sosa hit two home runs in the afternoon sunshine, putting him well ahead of his pace last year. With the exception of the local media and the Rockies general manager, everyone went home happy.

There is a certain tension between the way the Cubs are covered and the affection in which they are held by the public, however. Without a World Series since the early years of this century, the Cubs are still adored and the face of Sammy Sosa, the home run machine from the Dominican Republic, has replaced Michael Jordan on billboards. People enjoy the Cubs and as one of the city's pre-eminent sportswriters, Bob Verdi, pointed out in the Chicago Tribune on Saturday no end of media encouragement to do otherwise has prevailed. Baseball, like hurling, is a diversion, a captivation. Fans can be content with an appreciation of the way the games are played. Journalists fear foolishness if they are on their hindlegs applauding all the while.

That's the tricky part about sports journalism. We pay little attention to the ongoing scandals in administration, probe only lightly into the deeply unsexy business of sponsors and their influence, are dragged kicking and screaming towards the realities of drug use, but happily inflate ourselves by engaging either in "personality" wars or love-ins with the stars.

We don't have to be fans, but we don't have to tote agendas either. If Clare are naming phoney teams we shouldn't bother carrying the information or should carry it with caveats or, more usefully still, should use the practise as a trigger to abandon the Tuesday, Wednesday grind of reporting team selections and changes in favour of better analysis and harder news.

Sport needs to be kept clean and honest and the hard decisions involved there shouldn't be ducked in favour of a ceaseless diet of easy carping which misses the point of why people enjoy sport in the first place. Most of the bad guys aren't out there wearing jerseys and breaking sweat in the first place but that's another day's argument.