Hurling Focus on UCD: Most of the time the casual observer wouldn't be aware of UCD's existence as a senior club in Dublin. Except when the college wins a county title, which is the trigger for heated debate about what they're doing there in the first place.

This is one such year. Tomorrow UCD face Offaly champions Coolderry in the AIB Leinster club hurling championship and the grumbling is well under way.

The Dublin final defeat of Ballyboden St Enda's caused much angst in the county.

Much of the issues that arise are common to all third-level clubs around the country: that they are creating composite super-teams, recruiting players from different counties who have the advantage of being able to play with their home clubs as well; that this is unfair on small parish teams who must make do with whatever their playing resources are.

What's unique about UCD's hurlers - as opposed to their footballers or the hurlers in, say, UCC - is that they are competing somewhere that isn't a front-line hurling county. Any serious Fitzgibbon Cup (third-level colleges championship) team should be good enough to win Dublin.

Pause here and the issue looks clear-cut but of course it's not. Dave Billings, the GAA development officer in UCD, explains the background.

"The Dublin championship is organised on a league basis. For years the complaint about UCD was that they didn't play in the old county league but we were asked would we be part of this new format, which was intended to raise the standard. We agreed although it was difficult to fulfil fixtures throughout the summer with students on holidays."

During the group stages UCD lost three of their seven matches but qualified for the knockout stages and reached the final where they defeated Ballyboden, whose manager Paudie O'Neill has reservations about the status of college teams.

"I'd say that I don't have a negative position on UCD but the situation needs to be controlled and regulated because at the moment it's not a level playing field.

"In the county final Ballyboden was a genuine club side: 26 Dublin fellas, 25 of them had been with us since under-10. You could see on the day that we were a community club with local supporters and juveniles brought along.

"The only senior competition that a Dublin hurler can realistically win is the county championship with his club.

"Most of the UCD panel have serious intercounty experience and there are no Dublin players. When I look around at our bench there's lads that have played a bit at school but are more intermediate hurlers.

"Look at a county final like Cork's. Na Piarsaigh won it and all the talk was that Seán Óg will be the new captain. Same in Kilkenny with James Stephens and Peter Barry. It kick-starts the next year. I expect all of those players will kick something extra into the county over the next season. But there'll be no winners at Dublin's training sessions."

This situation is exacerbated by the fact that any promising Dublin players won't opt to play for UCD if their home club is senior. Attempts to tie scholarship students to the college for championship purposes caused outrage in the clubs. There are no Dublin players on the Dublin champions' panel of 34.

Tipperary All-Ireland winner Babs Keating is the UCD manager. He is impatient with the cribbing in Dublin and says that much of the stereotyping of the team is inaccurate.

"I would have thought it's an excuse not to lift standards a bit. The commitment UCD have made this year has been as good as any squad I've been associated with.

"We had two senior intercounty players the last day. We've played against teams who've had four or five on the Dublin team."

Although there are no local players benefiting from UCD's success, Keating says that the county could be more innovative about using the college's success.

"Mick Fitzgerald couldn't make the Cork panel of 30. Dublin should be thinking of coaxing him and maybe others like him to declare for the county.

"Dublin hurling, if it's sincere about having a better panel, will have to consider these things. They're not going to do it by bitching about UCD."

Billings points out that the statistics don't back up the charge that the college is abusing its access to talented youngsters from major hurling counties to dominate the Dublin championship.

"This club has been on the go for nearly 90 years. How many county titles have we won? No more than seven. We last won the county four years ago for the first time in 40 years. To play in the championship we have to be able to play during the summer vacation, which isn't easy for students. And we were well beaten in a number of games this season."

Nonetheless the presence - or more accurately, the success - of UCD creates resentment in the county.

O'Neill adds: "I don't have a problem if there are 20 or 21 guys who are willing to play for UCD in Dublin but I do have a difficulty with helicoptering guys from one county to another (reference to a controversial initiative that saw Billings arrange for a helicopter to touch down in the grounds of his own home club St Vincent's, across the road from Parnell Park on the day of the county final) which is the total antithesis of club competition.

"It doesn't help to encourage and inculcate the culture of hurling in Dublin. If Ballyboden win the county, there'll be past pupils to come down to the school and talk to the under-10s. That won't happen with UCD because none of the players are local."

Billings himself is ambivalent about the future.

"We'll wait and see if the Dublin County Board want us to enter next year. If you ask me 'is this good for Dublin hurling?' I'd have to say I don't know.

"I do know that for 30 years I've been hearing that this, that and the other is bad for Dublin hurling but I never seem to hear what's good for Dublin hurling. UCD were welcome when people wanted good teams in the A championship but since we've won it's a different story."