Does Galway's experience of All-Ireland finals count for much?

Having scored 2-1 in the 1963 All-Ireland final as a 20-year-old, Tom Murphy from Rower-Inistioge barely got a puck of the ball 12 months later as the Kilkenny full-forward line were devoured by the Hell’s Kitchen of Carey, Maher, and Doyle.

Pressed half a century later as to whether he and his colleagues had been intimidated by the Tipperary full-back line, the now Canon Tom Murphy — parish priest of Ballyragget in north Kilkenny — demurred. “We were youngsters. We had no fear of any those lads. I’d have been far more worried a few years later when I was older and I knew the consequences of defeat in an All-Ireland final.”

That pretty much sums up the dichotomy when it comes to experience and All-Ireland finals. Is being a newbie better than being an old boy? Is ignorance of what’s ahead of you preferable to familiarity? Or is there some kind of happy medium, some exalted state of consciousness, where a player is reasonably familiar with the demands of the big day without being so acquainted with them as to be petrified by Murphy’s “consequences of defeat”?