An extract from Sunday Independent GAA Correspondent Damian Lawlror's new book, 'Working on a dream: a year on the road with Waterford footballers'

January 2, 2009

Kill, Co Waterford

IT started like it always does, a frostbitten day that holds everyone prisoner indoors, picking at the leftovers of the Christmas just passed.

Around lunchtime, with his family settling down on the couch for the afternoon and a great fire blazing, Mick Ahearne cut his comforts and bade farewell. Carefully easing his car out of Kill and aiming it in the direction of Dungarvan, he began the first journey of a new season.

After eight years trekking over and back to play football for Waterford, Ahearne could navigate this route in a blanket of darkness. Save for a blip in 2003, when frustration temporarily dampened his spirits, he's been the county's most consistent player this decade. He's stood toe to toe with champion midfielders such as Darragh Ó Sé, Eamonn O'Hara and Nicholas Murphy, modern-day superstars of Gaelic football, and lived to tell the tale.

His manager, John Kiely, mostly refers to him as 'The Warrior' -- which says it all.

Today, a new book opens. The first chapter unfolds at Fraher Field, where IT Tralee have arrived to play the opening round of the McGrath Cup. It ain't Croke Park at the end of September and it never will be, but for Ahearne it's the birth of a new year.

He fetches his gearbag and feels a warm glow inside as he nears the dressing room. It will be nice to see them all again. The winter off-season has meant only sporadic bouts of training since last year, an odd spot of weight-pumping. But now he can hear the banter again -- his second family.

Once inside, before making eye-contact with anyone, he runs a quick tally on the bodies, a reflex habit you pick up when you play for Waterford. Not bad. There are 16 or so. 'Or so' means there might be 16 but there will probably be the bare 15. Finding a sub and getting him togged out on such Baltic days in January can demand extreme powers of persuasion. Some of the more stubborn guys keep their jeans on and their arms folded; the body language says 'Do not look in this direction'. The rest are either 'injured' or 'not quite fit enough yet'.

But Hurney is there and that's a good sign. On his day, there's a touch of the Kieran Donaghys about Gary Hurney, the six-foot-four target-man who can catapult a team to greater heights from either full-forward or midfield. He's always in demand, always being dragged to and fro. This year again the county hurlers have sent him an SOS, but the footballers need him more. Much more.

As Ahearne starts to tog out, team trainer Mick O'Loughlin summons the squad onto the field and coaxes them into the warm-up. The coach is all energy and enthusiasm. Easing them through the pre-match drills, O'Loughlin makes the point that the sooner they get cracking, the sooner it will all be over. And so, with plenty of layers added for protection, it's out into the freezing cold as the first buds of the 2009 season push their way into the light.

Fraher Field is playable -- just about. It's pockmarked with ragged holes and hollows, but it'll do. Today's game doubles as the official launch of the GAA's new experimental rules. Yellow cards are expected to be plentiful, and that explains the small army of photographers invading Dungarvan.

Still, the media frenzy has left the man and woman in the street unmoved. Just 76 spectators, most of them parents of the visiting students, brave the elements.

Game on. The home side begin as if they have several points to prove this year. Seán Fleming, a diminutive corner-forward better known in these parts as 'Beag', bangs in two early goals and Hurney soon adds another to put his side eight points clear. Gradually, though, they run into oxygen debt, and the younger, fitter college lads come back into contention. In the end, Waterford dig in and hang on, just about, to win by two points: 3-11 to 3-9.

Afterwards, in the relative comfort of the dressing room, Ahearne is grateful for a win they nearly let slip. "We collapsed in the second half but we had absolutely nothing done and they were way fitter than us," he says.

From Fraher Field, team and management head to Lawlor's Hotel for a meal and a meeting to map out the year ahead. Down there, there are no grand boasts or targets set; they know better than that. No talk of reaching for the stars; sometimes they're wary of reaching for the ceiling for fear of deflation.

A modest chart of their 2009 campaign is handed out. For now, it's stamina work and coaching three nights a week -- Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There will be weight training with their specialist coach Mel Shanley on Thursdays and a match on weekends.

"Apart from getting an inkling of those plans there wasn't a whole lot more said," Ahearne muses. "The most important point was that fellas will be accounted for from now on. Sometimes, a lot of lads are missing and it ruins the whole thing. You'd be there bursting your arse but you'd leave demoralised because there were only 12 or 13 lads. It needs to be sorted."

That's the only chunk of negativity you'll hear from him. He plays in a county where success is scarce but he doesn't need your pity. Nor do the others. They do this because they want to. Up to five years ago they were the laughing stock of Gaelic football, a circus act that trawled the by-waters of Ireland taking a pounding in every town they visited, but they've stopped clowning about. Inch by inch, they've turned the guffaws into smiles of admiration and raised the bar a little higher every season. Bit by bit, they're getting to where they want to be. Division 3. That's the dream.

A glance around the room in Lawlor's shows how far they've come. Maurice O'Gorman and his twin, Thomas, won interprovincial medals with Munster last year; Ahearne, Liam Ó Líonáin and Hurney have reached that level in the past too. There are decent players to choose from.

That's down to Kiely, known here as 'Jackson' because of his admiration for the Confederate general of the same name from the American Civil War. General Jackson was a tactical genius, and the Waterford manager looks and acts a little like him too; a big, powerful man with a beard and a relaxed style of leadership who loved confusing opponents. Kiely ticks the same boxes.

In 2008, days before they played Carlow in the league, Kiely received a phone call from the former Dublin star Paul Bealin, a good friend who was managing Carlow at the time.

"Well, John, have ye much done?"

"Ah Jaysus, nothing Bealo. We'd be doing well to get 11 or 12 lads out during the week. And yourselves?"

"Flying it. We have them in twice a week at 6.0am for training."

"You're not serious!" Kiely responded, "Jesus, some of our lads wouldn't turn up at 6.0pm."

Bealin had his inside track.

"Ah grand, John. Sure I'll see you Sunday then."

"No bother, Bealo."

They 'communicated' again near the end of that league match. Waterford were eight points up with time running out. Jackson passed along the sideline near his opposite number and allowed himself a mischievous grin.

"Jaysus, Bealo," he whispered, "You'd want to leave those lads have a lie-in in the mornings. Dragging them out of the bed -- 'tis doing them no good at all."

Under Kiely, things are seldom as expected. The truth is they're a safe distance from where he found them five years ago. At that time, inter-county football hardly registered. Fellas were too busy either hurling or playing club football, both of which offered considerably more potential than the Waterford football team. Fast forward to 2009, though, and the new panel is already picked -- and most of the faces from four years earlier are still in the mix.

The manager has added an extra dimension to the camp with every passing campaign, but this time there's another challenge. For the past three years collective preparation started in the middle of November. This year, though, with the winter training ban, they must squeeze in as many sessions as they can.

"If every county has adhered to the ban we should be okay, but I'm not sure they have," Ahearne smiles knowingly. "We'll find out soon enough. The main thing is that we're consistent this season and keep the likes of Gary Hurney. He wants to play hurling and football but I'm not sure Davy Fitzgerald will see it like that. In fact, there's no chance he will. I can't even see Gary being with us for the league."

Fitzgerald, the county's senior hurling manager, also has Hurney's two younger brothers, Patrick and John, on his books, not to mention Shane Walsh, another talented footballer who Kiely lost to hurling for the past four years. Without them, the consistency Ahearne craves will be hard to find.

"It might be, but hopefully we can build on last year when we won a string of matches," he says. "People might say that beating Clare in the Munster championship in 2006 was our highlight but while it was great, all I can remember is going out and getting a stuffing from Kerry the next day. No, the highlight of my time with Waterford was definitely the consistency of last year's league. We only missed promotion by a point and won five games in all. Only for Tipp catching us with two late goals in the last few minutes we would have been promoted. That, by the way, was my lowlight."

In any team it's hard to keep spirits up. Sometimes you feel like crawling back into the trenches and running up the white flag. Ahearne did just that back in 2003. "I was sick of it," he explains. "Greg Fives, Denis Walsh, Billy Harty -- they all came in as managers over a short space of time and gave it 100 per cent, but we were going nowhere. The year out got me going again, and then Jackson came in with new players, most of whom have all stuck around. I mean, those O'Gormans are as good as you'd see anywhere and I'm glad the joke element has gone out of it now. We train seriously and work hard, and our league results over the past few years show that.

"Half our battle is getting lads to tog out -- not many counties have that problem -- and another big negative is that we have no one from the city on our squad. Out of 50,000 people there surely are a few footballers in there but we don't see them.

'So it's a small pool we have. There were times when we could have done with training under lights as well to improve our skills early in a season, but after the hurlers have finished dancing around and making shite of pitches in the county not many club officers want to let the footballers in too. Those are our challenges but we seem to get around them as much as we can."

- Damian Lawlor

Sunday Independent