All-Ireland SHC Quarter-final: 1988 and all that. Galway fat on finals and the foie gras trimmings guzzled by the nouveau riche. They ease back into their deckchairs and pat their loaded tummies. They've just seen off Tipperary, whose awful desperation had looked eerily familiar when they'd seen it up close.

Still, no tears to shed over bluebloods. It's the second year in a row that Galway have seen off Tipperary. It's nice. Galway were just a peasant race of interest only to anthropologists the last time Tipp were allowed to leave the Munster estate back in 1971.

Welcome to the post-revolutionary world, say Galway. It's ours now but you're welcome to live in it. Back-to-back All-Ireland champions have the right to sit a while and survey their work every so often.

Could it be that it was all so simple then? Galway, having engineered the great leap forward 25 years ago, put together good under-21 sides in 1982 and 1983 and 1986 and a fine minor team in 1983 and then they'd done what you are supposed to do with nascent talent. They harvested it in bundles and won senior All-Irelands in 1987 and 1988. They had found the way of enlightenment, the path to peace and prosperity and a chicken in every man's pot.

And then, the following year, came the end of empire. The Tony Keady affair trundled down the line. The details are now a threadbare relic of the times but Galway never quite recovered. Certainly they thought about it and grieved about it for longer than was healthy and even though they kept reaching finals they were saying farewell to the good times without even knowing it.

Ah, 1988. Sixteen seasons as barren as a western field have passed since then. Good hurlers have worn the maroon during that time for a decade or more and they've packed it in without a senior All-Ireland medal to polish of an evening.

The odd thing, the infuriating thing, is that Galway have never been far enough away to feel anything other than impatience with their lot. They have, of course, until most recently always enjoyed (endured, they might say) accelerated seasons whereby they are set down amidst moving traffic in early August. They coveted their neighbours' right to shift up through the gears from May or June onward but . . .

Given their unhappy 11-year stint in Munster and their reluctance to embrace the idea of playing in Leinster, we must assume they regarded the two-month summer as the lesser of available evils.

Anyway, this year they arrive in Croke Park with a square meal of decent matches in their system but that same insecure feeling. Galway come equipped with the hurlers, but something else ain't there. They might be less than the sum of their parts again. After a week at Ballybrit, not many of their countyfolk want to be there to see that.

Impatience has almost killed them all. Galway's hurling public have mastered the neat doublethink of bemoaning their side's lack of matches but slandering any player who doesn't make the grade within the space of 140 championship minutes. That philosophy has spilled over into the belief systems of management teams, and the sheer dispensability of players in Galway is shocking to behold.

Would any other county in Ireland have Mark Kerins, Fergal Moore and Rory Gantley in civilian clothes tomorrow? More saliently, would any county who have suffered injuries to players of the status of Kevin Broderick and Eugene Cloonan still turn their faces away from players of that ability?

You look at some of the players counties like Wexford, Limerick, Clare and even Tipp have been forced to persist and work with over the years and marvel at the extravagance.

The flood of players continues to give the impression of permanent opulence and a feeling of eternal expectation. The perennially unfortunate under-21s lost six out of seven finals since winning an All-Ireland (the third of the decade) in 1996. Some they lost badly, some they went close in. Every year they washed their face.

Galway's back-to-back minor titles in 1999 and 2000 were followed by another last year and a close shave in 2003. They went back to back in 1994 and 1995 also and they carry the burden of heavy favouritism for this year's title.

At the end there's just one senior team to funnel all those options into. No wonder lads get mislaid.

Take Gantley. He had the pedigree and the talent. An All-Ireland minor medallist at the age of 15 and the son of 1980s star Finbarr Gantley, he scored seven points the last time Tipp met Galway in championship, in a qualifier game two years ago. Tipp won by a point.

Gantley has always been his own man, though, preferring a couple of years back to play for Beagh in an important championship game than to line out in the league for Galway. This year Gantley's face just doesn't fit even if his hurling might.

His free-taking might be especially missed were it not for the arrival of Ger Farragher, a more recent delivery off the Galway production line. If Farragher doesn't work out there's always Cloonan's return to look forward to.

If the theory that Cloonan unbalances the side holds sway there's always tomorrow's springer, Niall Healy of the 2003 minors (scorer of 1-10 in that year's final) or the sublime Kerrill Wade of last year's minor side, to fall back on.

If Hollywood is full of good-looking, daydreaming waitresses dying to audition, Galway is full of decent hurlers waiting for the call.

The county have the luxury of being able to make everyone dispensable. It's a habit which has been fed by a shop front stacked with young tyros and by successive managements who have had roving eyes.

In Galway there always appears to be support for the theory that the greener grass is actually on the other side of the stone wall.

Michael Bond was involved with the Galway under-21 sides of the early 1980s who became the platform for later All-Ireland successes. He states at the outset that underage success guarantees nothing but recognises that Galway might be victims of the effectiveness of their own structure.

"When I was in Offaly it was so easy. You had 17 or 18 players. You prayed everyone was fit. You could pick 13 straight away. The others depended on injuries.

"The problem for Galway is we are producing a huge number of good players but very few truly outstanding players and we keep looking for the players to be outstanding. Maybe only Ollie Canning, Eugene Cloonan and Kevin Broderick fit that description.

"Then there a large number of very good players. Galway do tremendous work. We won the under-16 last year, we won the minor, we were unlucky to be beaten in the under-21 final.

"It means that you could take the Galway first 15 and I could go away and pick another 15 and in three months I could probably beat your team or come close."

GALWAY PRODUCE so much talent that sometimes it's frightening. Joe Canning won an All-Ireland minor medal last year at the age of 15, and his scores from sideline cuts were a feature of the replayed final. He scored 1-3 last Saturday as Galway, the favourites again this year, cruised past Wexford and into the All-Ireland semi-final.

He has already played senior hurling for Portumna.

"Joe Canning is awesome," says Bond, "but you worry about fellas. By the time they reach 20 they can have played so much hurling they are burned out. The plan has to be not to give them too much physical training. Just ballwork. A Joe Canning has to be nurtured. He's hurling for club, school and county all year round. Those are huge demands."

Canning can be a superstar of the game or he can go the way of names like Aidan Poinard, Kenneth Burke and Gantley, players with great futures behind them.

Of the team which swashbuckled their way to that famous victory over Kilkenny in 2001 only Joe Rabbitte was approaching his expiry date. Joe was 30 and had more mileage on the clock through club and county than most men five years older.

Next was Cathal Moore, a graduate of the 1996 under-21 All-Ireland winners (one of nine who would play senior regularly) and a player whose versatility would prove to be his curse. He was 26 then.

Liam Hodgins and Greg Kennedy (also from the 1996 side, he cut his teeth on Joe Deane in the semi-final) were 25 and everyone else was younger. The average age was 23.4.

The striplings from Galway had beaten a hugely regarded Kilkenny side - remember how we swooned that summer? Would we ever again see a full-forward line like that striped trio of 2001, we wondered, having watched Kilkenny rack 5-20 in just two games in Leinster - by, famously, playing hard, first-time hurling.

Galway never let Kilkenny lease the space in which to build something majestic. It was a coup and it was a switch to a style of hurling not native to Galway sides, who like to imagine a little sweetness in themselves.

In the final against Tipp, Broderick had a goal disallowed and saw Brendan Cummins make a fine last-minute save. Fergal Healy hit the woodwork twice. The result was fair but Galway had enough regrets and enough to build upon.

That style was abandoned, though, and tomorrow only five of the team who gave Galway their best senior win of the current century survive. Only one, Richie Murray, plays in the same position. Last summer Kilkenny just whipped them out the gate in Thurles.

The odd thing is that by Galway standards this represents a slowing down in their desire to tinker and fiddle. In the 90s it wasn't unusual for as many as nine of a Galway starting 15 to change between one championship season and the next. Given a potentially winning hand, they'd throw more than half the cards in when they'd get a glance of the pot.

As 1988 receded in the memory the tendency grew more acute. Nine changes from the previous year on the championship line-up for 1997. A further nine changes the following summer, then seven the year after and so on. All this jumpiness in a county that started only two dozen different players in the course of four successive All-Ireland final appearances in the mid-80s.

The rate of change may have slowed but when it comes to the spine of the side Galway are still fidgety. In 1999 they finished the championship with Joe Cooney and Fergus Flynn at midfield. It was a transitional year; players like Justin Campbell and Pádraig Kelly were still flitting about the panel. Gantley came on as a sub for Alan Kerins and was designated one of the coming breed.

Since then on a diet of precious few championship games Galway have tried five championship full backs (Brian Feeney, Michael Healy, Diarmuid Cloonan, Liam Hodgins, Shane Kavanagh), and with people already clamouring for last year's minor captain, John Lee, six centre backs have been tried (Moore, Hodgins, Tony Óg Regan, David Hayes, David Collins, Derek Hardiman). And there have been nine midfielders (David Tierney, Gantley, Murray, Paddy Walsh, John Conroy, Feargal Healy, Regan, David Hayes, Moore), even when it looked as if the Murray and Tierney partnership of 2001 had passed the audition.

Up front, the rate of change is more sedate, four centre forwards and four full forwards having moved through the revolving door.

The patience in a county which exploded out of subsistence to the wealth of three All-Ireland wins in the 80s has worn thin. If something doesn't work immediately, out with it.

"There's a feeling that we have a divine right to win it," says Bond.

"I don't know how we got that way so fast. I used to go to games in the 60s and the 70s and I would be praying we wouldn't be hammered. It was the restructuring of the underage that brought along good teams.

"I was involved in the 82-83 under-21 teams. They formed the nucleus of the 87 and 88 teams that won two All-Irelands and possibly might have won more.

"That underage structure is still producing players. Maybe it should be said that the success of a hurling county shouldn't just be judged in terms of senior All-Irelands. A senior All-Ireland is a very hard thing to win."

Tomorrow they travel, fresh faced as usual, to battle Tipp again. Galway are healthy enough. Just not especially happy.