ON GAELIC GAMES: Although the Charlie Carter story is only breaking - and bearing in mind the history of recent "retirements" in the county - a couple of points can still be made. You might assume that the county board will attempt to intervene and defuse the situation, but given the state of relations between the player and manager Brian Cody such a move isn't certain.

This isn't the first time a team captain has had to endure selection problems, but Carter doesn't fit the stereotype of a limited player elevated - perhaps opportunistically - by his club to the captaincy in order to secure selection. Carter still has something to offer and proved as much in the frantic environment of the National Hurling League final last month.

Neither is it a Maurice Fitzgerald situation, where a gifted player is deemed not to have 70 minutes in him.

Nonetheless, the Maurice Fitzgerald question is relevant - are there six forwards in Kilkenny better than Carter? Certainly, in his own mind, Carter was deserving of a place on the team.

The week before he came on and helped turn the league final against Tipperary, he commented on the spat, before the current one, which was triggered by the regulation league match, also against Tipperary.

"I'm back on the panel - I was never off it. I'm working hard as ever and all I can do is hope for the best. I think I'm good enough to hurl. I was disappointed to be left off, but that's only normal and I'm trying to get back in there.

"I'm working hard at my game and I think I'm on top of my game at the moment, and I was disappointed that I didn't play against Tipperary, but sure that's the end of it. On we go from here."

There wasn't much sign there of a loss of appetite or concern about his ability to rise to big occasions.

Even yesterday, as he spooled out the tape about "loss of appetite" and the rediscovery of the joys of club hurling, Carter allowed that he had played "reasonably well all spring".

Although no one disputes the right of a manager to pick teams, some sensitivity in the exercise of authority is to be expected. On Saturday, Kilkenny opened their defence of the Leinster title in Nowlan Park, a venue the team is unlikely to revisit this year.

Carter was the county captain at the county ground. To leave him on the bench in front of a home crowd was provocative.

"You have to have the mind right for big days," the player told Brian Carthy on RTÉ radio yesterday, "and mine hasn't been right for a couple of months."

But getting the mind of a capable, experienced player right is one of the things to be expected of a manager. It's only a year since the country was convulsed by the failure of Mick McCarthy to do as much at the World Cup.

In analysing Cody's actions we have to assume that he had a role in mind for the player. Had he simply come to the conclusion that Carter no longer had sufficient to offer, he should have said as much.

The Kilkenny manager has always played a straight bat on the issue and, to be fair to Carter, he spent recent months concocting anodyne statements for public consumption as the difficulties evidently intensified.

Even yesterday he refused to exacerbate the controversy beyond re-iterating his rather obvious exasperation and unhappiness but refusing to itemise his grievances.

But it would appear that the space for manoeuvre afforded by these banal declarations wasn't exploited. The down side of publicly stonewalling is that there has never been a clear sense of what was expected of Carter. Was he a player whose form hadn't convinced the manager, but who was being given every chance to regain his place?

That seems unlikely judging by the chopping and changing in the attack. It's reasonable for Cody to operate on the basis that requirements for corner forwards differ from those for half forwards, but the reluctance to predicate experimental line-ups on the basis of Carter in the corner looks more pointed than that.

Was Carter's role to be defined as that of an impact sub? Sometimes that is the optimum use for players, but only rarely do they accept the situation.

Yet, there is nothing to suggest that such a role was agreed with management. The player himself said yesterday that being omitted from the team wasn't "the whole problem".

In any event, even allowing for the comfort of the Dublin match in the second half, surely a player designated as an impact sub would have been given a run, particularly when three replacements were unused, just to keep him sharp.

It seems equally unlikely that Carter was being kept on board purely for his wise old head.

That sort of role, played by Billy Byrne and George O'Connor in Wexford and in Kilkenny last year by John Power, is reserved for players who accept that they aren't going to start - not those who can put up a reasonable case (one that commands a fair degree of public support) for inclusion.

At this stage of the season there isn't limitless opportunity for shuttle diplomacy, so if an accommodation is to be reached it had better be quickly, although Cody didn't move on DJ Carey last summer until after the Leinster final. This is a big risk for the player and manager.

Should Kilkenny progress through the summer and successfully defend their All-Ireland, Carter will miss out on the opportunity to lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup - presumably even if still on the bench he would make an appearance in the All-Ireland final just as he did before lifting the NHL trophy after being introduced as a replacement.

And few will remember the unhappy end to his career.

But if Kilkenny lose the title with the forwards misfiring and in need of attacking inspiration, no prizes for guessing whose head will be on the block then.

High stakes indeed.