I N the summer of 1992, when the Munster hurling championship was far from the thriving democracy it is today, Paul Flynn boldly made his entrance. He scored a wonderful goal in the dying moments of the Munster minor final against Tipperary to secure a replay, his team refusing to bend the knee as the audience had come to expect. Waterford's peasantry hadn't won a minor title since 1948. Flynn finished the day with 3-6 of his side's 4-7, 3-5 from play.

On the same afternoon, Ger Cunningham tended goal for the well-heeled gentry of Cork when they repelled Limerick to win back the senior title. Like Flynn earlier, he left an important mark. A crucial save from Anthony Carmody and a huge downfield clearance found Tomás Mulcahy who scored a Cork goal that helped turn the course of the game. A lifetime later, Flynn and Cunningham are reunited in Thurles today, fighting a common cause for Ballygunner in a Munster club final.

Though Flynn belonged to a different generation, he was prodigious enough to ensure their paths crossed on the field and jokes about putting a few goals past the Corkman before he retired. That year would prove to be Cork's last good summer until 1999. Flynn's senior career began with a harrowing defeat by Kerry in 1993 and enjoyed little progress until '98, but the feats of the Waterford minors and U21s 17 years ago were to eventually pay dividends.

Over the years Flynn and Cunningham have grown to be friends and occasional golfing partners. "It was necessary I think," says Flynn of his new manager's appointment. "If you're on form, you play. It's nice to have a guy who calls the shots and who people can't influence. I know Ger a long time. He talked me into playing this year, I probably wasn't going to play. He has been pulling us out of sprints, the older fellas; if the rest did eight we'd do five, we're not being 'flaahed'. It's common sense. A huge presence, obviously, a calm man. Less is more."

Flynn has always divided opinion. After Waterford's Munster deliverance in 2002, he was part of the infuriatingly inept surrender to Clare in Croke Park and looked resigned to defeat long before the whistle. Waterford were enigmatic and he embodied their mood swings. The next summer he roared out of the blocks against Limerick and scored 3-3; in the replay he was exemplary in a more workmanlike manner, rolling up the sleeves, and a year after that he was an All-Star.

As a leading forward of his generation it was the only award he received in his time hurling with Waterford, small change for his talents. In that year's Munster final after John Mullane's red card, he duped Cork with a trademark dipping free but it was his leadership that won many cynics over, the guts he showed when his county desperately needed manliness and heroics. Against Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final, he was also outstanding and thrived under the pressure and weight of expectation although the team lost.

But he could appear lazy and not sufficiently interested. Those who have read Donal óg Cusack's gripping story may appreciate that it is unlikely Flynn ever purged himself after defeat by switching off the lights in the local gym and skipping madly in the dark to the point of exhaustion. No, he was from a different school, as were Waterford,

noted of course in Brian Corcoran's Darwinian world of them and us. Hurling, as Flynn has admitted, never became a matter of life and death. But he's still hurling, 35 next month, with two small kids scurrying around the house, now part of the life that always existed for him outside of the game.

"It was with the ball and the hurley that I got my thrill, the enjoyment, it wasn't running laps; I had no interest in that really. But I could go up to the hurling field on the Tuesday or Wednesday before a Munster championship game and hit 180-190 frees. I was up there the week before last. I do it on my own; no one knows about it, I don't tell anyone I was up there. I enjoy it. I set myself little targets. I don't go home till I reach them."

He hurled a long shift for Waterford, finishing after the 2008 All-Ireland final, and all that twisting to evade defenders on hard ground, and the many wintry crusades with Ballygunner, has left him with two badly worn ankles. He had an operation on one in early 2008 which meant he missed much of Waterford's preparation and returned shortly before the ill-fated Clare match that precipitated the downfall of Justin McCarthy. His final season brought only fleeting appearances. If Waterford had beaten Limerick the year before, he wouldn't have played in the All-Ireland final because of injury. His last enjoyable day in a Waterford shirt was the previous match, the quarter-final win over Cork.

He found a place for himself in the game without letting it totally consume him. "If someone in the dressing room wants to run in and have a cold shower, fine, let them do it. If he wants to break a hurley then let him do it. But don't ask me to break a hurley if I don't feel like it. Or eat pasta. And I think people are coming round to that now; it is a collection of oddballs really. You can't uniformly say this is good for everybody."

Did he not lack something being that way? "Yeah, I would agree with that. Maybe I wasn't as cut-throat, as driven as others. Like, I wouldn't like to be in a situation where a match is tormenting me for three or four days. Where I am going back over every one of those frees. Coming from Waterford, at the start I wasn't expecting All-Ireland final days and so maybe the drive wasn't there. But once we got going we did everything we could."

His career brought a litany of famine endings. He won a county medal in his first year (1992); Ballygunner's last had been in 1968. The Munster minor with Waterford ended 44 years of failure, while the All-Ireland U21 final replay win over Offaly, in which he scored five points, closed an 18-year gap. They sampled the experience of beating Tipperary. Of beating Cork. Of winning a Munster senior title. All sorts of old persecutions vanished. And, all the while, playing a brand of hurling that charmed even the most fuddy-duddy purist.

He has eight county medals with Ballygunner but only one Munster success, in 2001, which qualifies as a poor return. They had to travel to play Sixmilebridge the day after winning in '92 and after that Clare clubs repeatedly frustrated their attempts to get out of the province. By the time St Joseph's Doora-Barefield were slain in 2000, they had lost to four different Clare clubs in the competition through the 1990s. In 2005, there was further heartbreak when Newtownshandrum, today's opponents, slipped past them.

If Ballygunner lose today, it could be Flynn's cue to retire. Fergal Hartley has been hurling a year longer and will be 38 in the new year. They made their Waterford debuts the same day against Kerry in 1993. "At the start of the year he (Hartley) said, no, he'd play intermediate, but look it, he's as good as what's around and better than most." At the other end of the spectrum is Paudie Mahony, 17, who used to torment Flynn for t-shirts, jerseys, golf balls and other assorted goodies not too long ago.

The helmet rule may hasten Flynn's departure as he has been unable to adjust to the visor that will soon become obligatory. "I tried it and played two or three matches with Ballygunner wearing it and I found it okay when the ball was in the air, but when ball came in low I was running over it, running away from it, I couldn't see it; the closer it was to me, the harder I found to see. We played championship about two weeks later against Tallow and I played with my own helmet with no mask for that game. And I've never gone back.

"I tried once before, we had a lad in our club, Paul Forest, he lost an eye. Pure freak accident. Handle of a hurl came loose and flew and lodged in his eye, it was a repaired handle I think. The whole club went through a phase of trying after that. I remember my mother bought me one and we played Glenmore one night and I was lucky I was wearing it 'cos I got a full bang straight in the face. But I wouldn't have got the bang if I wasn't wearing it 'cos I couldn't see where I was going. I dived straight into a hurley. I didn't know where I was, it was lack of vision.

"I found that fellas playing with masks are playing a different game to guys not wearing masks, they can afford to be a small bit more aggressive. They can use the hurl in a different way, the hurl was starting to come up a bit, I just noticed that the odd time, because they had protection."

But, fundamentally, it is harder to get away from players. He is having to come up with new tricks and improvisations to deal with the pace deficit. He doesn't think that inter-county hurling can get much faster; in ten years' time it won't be appreciably faster in his view. He doesn't want to talk about his relationship with Davy Fitzgerald, though it was short-lived. He was asked what it was like playing under Fitzgerald and responded by saying he didn't know, as he hadn't much experience of it. Fitzgerald responded by making a barbed comment about Flynn's training record. His relationship with Justin McCarthy broke down and if he feels a sense of lingering regret over that episode it is that the players were left to do the dirty work in ousting him.

It seems a sad way to conclude a relationship that once had McCarthy happily comparing Flynn's performances to Christy Ring. But the relationship, Flynn says, existed purely on hurling terms and never strayed beyond. As it is for most players, though, there are many cherished friendships gleaned from those years since Flynn first graced the national stage.

"I didn't get on with Brian Lohan for years. I didn't know him, (then) we were over in Singapore at the All-Stars and we got on great. I remember another time in Phoenix with the All-Stars with Philly Larkin, and I marked him lots of times, the two of us were dying (from the night before) and I remember saying to him, 'give me two balls, just run over two balls'. Fair enough he said, but that's it: two. He missed one, and I got a goal, just something for the Waterford people over there. Everyone was happy."

Ballygunner v Newtownshandrum,

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