Perfecting the art of pulling together

Neville Maxwell stands in the shadows of the boathouse, devouring a jam sandwich and an apple. He is tanned and sleek-limbed, carrying the spare grace of a teenage athlete.

Maxwell is 30. Suddenly, he fires the butt of the apple against the wall and it disintegrates, showering Neal Byrne who lies on the stone floor stretching.

"Jesus, sorry," giggles the missile-thrower. Byrne says nothing, staring steadfastly at the roof. At the rear of the shed lies Gearoid Towey, a Corkman of intense fervour, also warming down.

By the door is Tony O'Connor, the sunniest of the group, chatting amicably, half clowning yet deadly serious. In their midst stands Ray Sims, their coach, a saviour with a Stoke accent, at once paternal and distant.

This musty shed, the lapping waters, dry bread; this has been their world. Purgatory before Sydney. Nottingham is a pleasant city in a drowsy, middle England way, but it's hardly a pep pill.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with the place," synopsised a Bristol cabbie who had lived there for 40 years. The Irish four are here doing what they have always done. Gliding across water. Resting. Waiting. Rowing some more. Resting. This is their life.

"It's hard to have the outside thing at this time," said Maxwell. "Something that cracks me up is that often we go out for a cup of coffee together in the afternoon. We'd be sitting in this cafe and there'd be nothing said.

"All these eyes looking at us, four lads in silence. But it is a really comfortable kind of silence, you know."

They created a routine in Nottingham, polished and monotonous, so much so that words were obsolete. Twice daily, they'd row the two-kilometre course, back and fourth, Sims timing them from his bicycle.

For an audience they had dog walkers and leisure joggers and the sound of passing freight trucks. All four of them are stubborn bastards, according to Sims.

Independent, sparky buggers. A few times, when training stank, when the oars were just millimetres off sync, they'd seethe in the car on the way home and maybe flare up and then it would evaporate and they'd be back on the water.

"You're always seeking the perfect row," explains Towey. "And you'll never, ever get it," elaborates O'Connor.

"Even when it's 99 per cent right, you'll come away realising there was one element missing. Next time out, you'll obtain that, but there'll be another flaw. You hit perfection for a stroke or two, but that's about it."

O'Connor and Maxwell have been in our subconscious since Atlanta 1996, when they lost out on a medal place by under a second. Their live television interview, given to Caroline Murphy, was perhaps the most honest, eloquent spoken moment of the entire Games.

Their race came early in the Games, so when the athletics came round, the rowers were back home watching television with the rest of the planet. "You'd be sitting watching, thinking `Jesus, was I even there'," says O'Connor.

Far from moping, they instead went on to Edinburgh and took bronze in the world championships. This year, Byrne and Towey, both world medal-winning scullers, joined them in the fours.

Scullers are mavericks, governed only by their own souls and wants. Watching them cope and melt into the team environment has been at the core of this adventure.

"Ah, sure sculling is much harder, so this has all been a doddle," grins Towey. "We have been working well as a team, things get done. If something is wrong, we all see it and Neville will call it."

"That's cos Nev doesn't pull as hard as the rest of us," explains Byrne. "It's true," says Maxwell. "Usually I start singing halfway through a race."

After the four of them qualified for the Olympics in Lucerne last July, all the "ifs" disappeared from the equation. They could speak about Sydney unconditionally for the first time and, as with Atlanta, the world started noticing them again.

"We just happen to do a job that gets a lot of attention every four years. It's like lads who go to the moon or whatever, astronauts who have TV cameras trained on them a half hour before the launch and that's it.

"You forget all the work that goes into it. You go home and people say: `Oh, you must be excited.' Well, no. And it's not being cocky or anything. This is just what we do every single day. So this attention well, it's all . . . it's all a load a bollocks."

He says this with no bitterness. None of the four are under any illusions about what their devotion to the boat will bring them. No riches, scant headlines, mostly aching bones. Sure, there are sacrifices.

"A girlfriend. A job. A car," identifies Neal Byrne. But all of them admit they are hooked on this life, happily obsessed with trying to tap in on the mystery of this lonesome and mostly unrewarding sport.

They knock good times out of it. Within sporting circles, they see themselves as a breed apart. Early last winter, they were at a carding weekend with potential Irish Olympians in Limerick.

It was their rest time, so after the first day they went out and got hammered. "Us and the cyclists," recalls Towey gleefully. "The next day we were all sitting there wrecked and the athletes were there with folders and were asking all these questions."

Conformity doesn't rest well with this Irish team. The four have had to scrape and fight for money to survive so they don't feel obliged to answer to anyone bar themselves. And Sims.

Days after qualifying, the coach returned from a wedding in Nottingham, expecting to find his charges asleep. "I came back early cos I was feeling guilty about them," he laughs.

The team were out. Not guzzling barrel-loads and pretending to be Starsky and Hutch out, but out nonetheless.

Sims quietly bombarded them with logic and swearwords that evening and a line was drawn. They satisfied themselves with restful interests. O'Connor paints. "No waterscapes, though." Maxwell calls his fiancee. Byrne loses himself in music. Hours and days tick on. They talk about Sydney rarely, but each has his vision.

"I guarantee you that if the row goes really well we won't know who is near us or who finished where," says Maxwell. "It's like going into a tunnel, you are just aware of yourself and the water. It happened in the World Championships in 1997.

"I saw the video later and I would have been shitting it if I'd known it was so close. But, when it goes well, all those details fall way."

Byrne agrees with this. "Yeah, if we row our best in Sydney and lose, well fair enough. At least we will know that we couldn't have done anything else."

For them, it is all about the pursuit. Gearoid Towey remembers being off sick during the Seoul Olympics and happening on the rowing and figuring he might like it.

By college, he was devoted to it, giving it every second outside lectures. "Didn't really fit in because of it. I went straight from lectures to the water." So he dropped out and went to live and row in England. He chased the lifestyle as did they all. So the hoopla and hard cash that inflates Sydney is not really part of the deal.

The glamour, the closing fireworks, they'll enjoy afterwards, as spectators. Sydney is just a regatta, more sweat, it is a stretch of water with the same faces in the same boats they have been meeting all season. At least, that is what they silently insist to themselves.

"Everything we have done together for the last six months goes into that one race," says O'Connor. "Say we win a silver having done everything we humanly could. Well, in some ways that would be better than winning a gold after having a shite race.

"We are looking for the perfect row. Though in saying that, that's a load a crap. We'd love gold."

Anyone who has ever come into even fleeting contact with these four dearly wishes the same. As usual with Irish sporting stories, their efforts have been undermined by woeful administrative bungles. They could pen a book on the subject. But it's all part of the deal.

"See, they know no matter how we are treated that we will keep doing this," says Byrne. "They know we won't quit." But, of course, they will, some day. O'Connor declares he will sit in the Irish boat until he is dragged away screaming. The others make similarly stubborn vows.

Newcomers will emerge from unlikely corners of Ireland, blessed or cursed with the same obsession. These four will take their leave then. But, this week, it is their time. Friends of Towey's are hiking their way across the continent and will be in Sydney when he races. Tony O'Connor wonders about his mother's attendance. "I dunno why she goes, she can never bring herself to actually watch the race."

But, as with four years ago, we will all watch. For these rowers, glory hours are as scarcely glimpsed as comets. This latest turn, this spin through the tunnel, might yet be their finest.