Hurling surely must have been invented for Pale King Henry

If the late David Foster Wallace had been interested in hurling, instead of being some class of tennis fan who preferred to write about Roger Federer, he might have found his ideal subject yesterday in Croke Park.

Henry Shefflin. Wallace might have been thinking of the Kilkenny man when he was rummaging for titles for his last novel: The Pale King.

There have been great hurlers before and, as Ring used to say, there are better yet to come, but few have seized the imagination like Shefflin.