Hayes is most divisive and the most influential in game now

OF ALL the high-profile residents holding deeds to one of those prized condos on hurling's Main Street, none comes close to Kyle Hayes in their ability to ignite a wildfire.

- Roy CURTIS

On or off the pitch, Hayes is the preferred accelerant for social media arsonists seeking to set the online world ablaze.

Drop his name - his genius as a sportsman trailed by his deeply unsavoury past - into a conversation and, typically, it has the effect of a Molotov cocktail.

Neither the game's alley fighters nor its most dementedly combative figures, not even Ireland's dean of the perpetually highly-strung, the hyper-emotional Davy Fitzgerald, can set summer so instantly aflame as Limerick's skyscraping five-time All Star.

That he was back in court less than 24 hours after last month's Man of the Match masterclass against today's Munster final opponents Cork reconfigured the entire All-Ireland debate, was a reminder of how the threads of his two lives have become so inextricably knotted.

And of how seeking to disentangle one from the other will remain an exercise in futility for as long as the Kildimo Pallaskenry leviathan remains a lead player on Championship Broadway.

The swashbuckling giant who led the shattering undressing of the Rebels, whose blistering impact on the long days has exhausted the pundits store of superlatives, co-habits with the author of an infinitely more sinister off-field backstory.

A five time All-Ireland winner; a young man who avoided jail after receiving a two-year suspended sentence on two counts of violent disorder inside and outside a nightclub in Limerick in 2019.

He was later ordered to do 180 hours community service.

Ironically, the more successful Hayes is at invading the vital moments in Limerick's mission to reclaim their status as the alpha males on the hurling landscape, the higher the volume is turned up on the chorus of outrage.