Tense time for Dublin's prince and their prince in waiting

THE TIME: Any Tuesday before any big match. The place: Parnell Park or The Trinity Grounds in Gantry.

"Is there a team yet?" asks a journalist.

"No. No team yet," says another.

"Ask Wayne there. Ask him if he knows the team," says a journalist.

"Wayne, is there a team yet?"

"Might be lads, might be," says Wayne, dancing like a welterweight.

"Do you know the team, Wayne?"'

"Question is, do youze know it. Go on, guess the team.

"Eh, well, hmm, O'Leary in goal?"

"Ah experts, experts, experts."

"Moran at corner back."

"Lads, lads, lads. Do ye really work for the papers?"

Wayne walks away shaking his blond head. Typical Wayne McCarthy moment.

Wayne has been coming to Dublin training sessions since he was knee high to a minor. His Da, Pat McCarthy used to bring him out to Parnell Park on summers' evenings. He remembers Gerry McCaul's earnest reign (standing in the shed listening to what Gerry was shouting at them) and every manager ever since. He reckons he was about six when he started coming out. He's to now.

Tall and skinny.

He's part of the Dublin team. He shares their victories, lives through their defeats, plays in their golf outings. On training nights Charlie Redmond will pick him up in Finglas or if Charlie is busy in the fire brigade station Keith Barr or Mick Galvin or Mick Deegan will drop by. If they're all busy he'll call somebody else.

When the current Dublin management took over in the autumn of 1995 one of the new selectors introduced himself to Wayne (then 14) under the assumption that Wayne was a player. A little too early, maybe.

Last summer, on the Saturday before the Leinster final, Dublin's recently pruned panel was too small for a full scale practice game. Wayne McCarthy ended up playing. Daydream believer stuff.

"I used to come out with the Da," he says, sitting on the grassy bank: beside the Erin's Isle pitch in Finglas. "I always liked it just watching what the players were doing. From as far back as I can remember I wanted to play for Dublin. I'd go out and see if I could learn anything or do anything to help, fetch footballs or get to take shots on John O'Leary. I've known John O'Leary since I was a baby. We have all these pictures of him at home holding me as a baby."

"Dropping you, probably," says Charlie Redmond, sitting on the bank beside Wayne.

It's late on Thursday afternoon beneath an empty blue sky in Finglas. Wayne McCarthy and Charlie Redmond have just finished yet another session. Kicking, fetching, kicking. Charlie thinks it was Wayne's Da who suggested that Wayne be taken on as a gopher for these solitary afternoons when Charlie practices his freetaking.

So long ago it's hard to remember.

"Pat said if I ever needed anyone to collect the balls when I was practising frees that young Wayne would do it. So he came out. I didn't like it at first. I hate anyone watching me practice. It was awkward for a while but it saved time and I got through, more work. Now, if Wayne isn't coming out I don't bother going out myself."

It's an exact science, fetching footballs for Charlie Redmond.

Charlie is the sort who can be distracted by the beating of a butterfly's wings in a neighbouring field. It's, one thing having 60,000 people making chaos in Croke Park on a Sunday afternoon. It's fine to kick in that hubbub. It's another thing to have one person leaning on a wall making judgments. A few winters back, for instance, they put up some houses beside the Erin's Isle pitch. Charlie nearly lost his mind with the builders' muffled roars reaching him from the scaffolds.

Wayne coped with it all.

"I never minded him. I'd say I was about 11 when I started coming out with him. I just looked up to him really. He's one of the best footballers ever. It was a privilege just to be out helping him."

There is a ritual to it all now.

Charlie comes out of the concrete dressing rooms and has a little run. Wayne comes out about three minutes later with the footballs. Six or eight footballs, usually eight. Wayne will stand at the small gate which marks the entrance to the pitch and kick each football into Charlie who wilt drive into the ball and try to pop it over the bar from here, there or wherever. Wayne will move behind the goals kicking the balls back to Charlie and Charlie will kick for points. Three or four minutes nonstop.

Then they start with the free kicks. Serious business. Charlie takes the balls to one spot. Kicks one which Wayne catches or retrieves and holds behind the posts. He holds each one until Charlie has finished kicking from that spot. Theo they move to some place else and begin again.

They move all over the place. Today when they began Charlie kicked with the wind behind him. He hates kicking into the wind, but that has to be done too. Sometimes, though, he likes to just build up confidence kicking frees with the wind at his back.

"It's great to see them going over and over. You get a bit of a rhythm going. Confidence is important.

Knowing what you are doing. Some times someone in Dublin will say to me that I'm doing this wrong or that wrong with my kicking. It'll get in my head. I'll mention it to Wayne. Wayne will contradict them. He knows more about it."

Generally, though, they don't really talk that much.

"I'll say to Wayne: `Did I kick: well?' `Did I not kick well?'"

"I'll say yeah he kicked well, or else I'll just say nothing," says Wayne. "Sure he knows when he kicks well."

Charlie has his superstitions too. Wayne, who has been through three AllIreland finals and dozens of big days with Charlie, knows the routines by now, knows to make space on the edgy days before a big".

He'll have to drop his keys in the same place when he's going out. He'll have to have the same warmup. He'll always get his hair cut. Just had a trim this morning, didn't ya Charlie?"

"Jaysus," says Charlie, shaking his head.

At the end of each session they have their own competition, kicking the ball from 50 or 60 yards away towards a little gate at the side of the pitch. These days Wayne gets more through the gate than Charlie.

"I'm not here to make judgements," laughs Wayne.

They've been through thick and thin together.

GOOD days. Charlie gave Wayne the jersey he wore when Erin's Isle won their first county football championship a few years back. On the day in 1995 when Dublin won their first All Ireland in 12 years, it was Wayne's birthday.

Bad days. They both recall the black Sunday of September 1994. Charlie had missed another penalty in another All Ireland final. Down people were jigging on the pitch. Hard rain was falling. Charlie Redmond didn't wait around. As he was sprinting form the scene of another heartbreak Wayne, who had squirmed through the wire from the Hogan Stand, joined him.

They were both crying. They got into the empty Dublin dressingroom. Charlie tossed his clothes on without showering and threw Wayne his kitbag. They left.

"I carried the bag," says Wayne, "hoping that people wouldn't recognise Charlie. We were gone before Down even got the cup.

"Bad day," says Charlie, shaking his head "I got to the Telecom carpark at the back of Croke Park and the car wasn't where it was supposed to be. Grainne (his wife) hadn't been able to get in. Wayne had to go off and look for her.

"After an All Ireland final, looking for one person. I just stood in the car park waiting in the rain. Bad day. Looking back, though, there's worse things in life.

"Thing is," says Wayne, pointing to the Erin's Isle pitch, "we practised penalties up here. Charlie would hit the stanchion at the back of the net anytime he wanted to almost. ,They just never went in on the pitch.

Well it's different when it's you and me and the sun is splitting the trees Wayne," says Charlie.

"Yeah," says Wayne shaking hid head.

Last summer after Meath beat Dublin, Wayne came into the dressingroom and sat down beside Charlie.

"Is this the end of the road Charlie?" asked Wayne.

"Yeah," said Charlie "End of the road."

"It wasn't, of course."

"He got coaxed back," say Wayne "If he wanted it bad enough `he'd have another year out of it too."

Wayne knows if Charlie is going well. He can read him like the weather.

He just has to look at how he is moving in the afternoons up ate Erin's Isle. A couple of years ago Wayne was asked if Charlie was kicking well. Wayne said yeah, he thought Charlie was kicking better than ever. Charlie scored seven points against Meath that Sunday.

"So how I'm kicking this week then, Wayne?" laughs Charlie.

"No comment," says Wayne.

Charlie had a bit of a problem last year in the Leinster final. Needed, tinkering.

"I was having problems for a while coming into the final. Just by luck the first two frees fell right where I was having the problems. Missed them both. Got a really difficult one soon after and put it over the bar, but I missed the first couple. This year I've done a bit of work and I think I've come up with a solution. I was losing sight of the goals in the run up. You have to have the goals in your peripheral vision, just to know. So I've changed the run up. I'm hitting the ball harder and fuller now, it's a better strike, more full, but prone to a miskick. If I miskick I'm going to look like a real toad."

He'll take that philosophically. He's looked like a real toad in Croke Park before and he's been forgiven. He's looked like a prince too and it's been forgotten. Charlie has been there for so many big, huge, turbulent days in his roller coaster life he's just part of the GAA landscape.

It might all end for Charlie Redmond in Croke Park tomorrow afternoon. If things go bad (and the auguries aren't good) Dublin will be playing under a new manager next autumn. The new broom might sweep Charlie away.

"Yeah," he says. "It might be a bit of "don't call us we'll call you - Maybe I'll have serious questions to ask myself anyway.

Charlie looks out at the pitch. Wayne looks at Charlie.

"I'm not Donovan Bailey when it comes to pace anymore," says Charlie wistfully.

"You never were," says Wayne. "Your head gets you, there quicker. You'll have another year if you want lit."

"Don't know,"says Charlie.

"Thinking will get you there. Have to be able to use it when you get it, too."

There's a pause.

"You're getting my last ever Dublin jersey whenever it is.

This could be poignant little story. End of the road for Charlie. End of the world for Wayne. Lots of long, empty, evenings ahead as Dublin rebuild and Charlie grows old and Wayne goes back to doing homework.

Maybe not. On a Saturday evening in May, Charlie drove down to Newbridge to watch the Dublin minors. Dublin beat Kildare by a point in the Leinster championship. Wayne McCarthy scored the three points from frees which took the Dubs into the clear.

"He got a couple of frees and steadied them," says Charlie. "That's what won the game."

All the evidence suggests that Wayne McCarthy is Dublin's next big thing.

"He's a smashing footballer," says Charlie, "and a great hurler. He won the AllIreland Feile na Gael hurling skills competition a couple of years ago. He's on the county minor football and the minor hurling teams at the moment and he's just 16. There's people dragging bits out of him to play all over the place, to play here and there. I tell him that he's got a lot of years in front of him and don't let himself get burned out. Although, he's a minor and he plays, both codes he shouldn't let himself be pulled and dragged."

This year Wayne played on seven different teams. Three in school in St Vincent's in Glasnevin, two in Erin's Isle and the two county minor teams.

"Since I started in minor, I'm training every night of the week now," says Wayne. "I don't know what I did with my time before. It's Sunday and Tuesday with hurling. Friday with football. I'd go to Dublin senior training on Thursday and every other day I'd be practising with Charlie in the afternoon. No fear of putting on weight."

"And he could do with the bit of weight," says Charlie. "That's all he, lacks. He he has two good feet, quick hands, reads it well. He's got everything. I'd like to see him drive into the ball a bit more aggressively, but that will come. There are great hopes for him. He's the exceptional talent in both codes in the club. He just plays for fun and that's how its should remain. Although playing minor for Dublin with the blue jersey on, that's not for fun."

Charlie notices Wayne consciously extracting the benefits.

"When I'm kicking the ball at him I see he's working on going for the ball in the air. He's working on his game. It's been known for many years in Erin's Isle that he's a great player, but we don't put too much pressure on him. It's a great pleasure, for us watching him develop."

WAYNE has three years of school left. When schooldays end? "Play for Dublin?," he says. He breaks into a laugh. "And be a fireman?"

Do they ever think that they'll play on the same team together?

"I've often thought about that," says Charlie.

"Same here," says Wayne.

"It might happen this summer. There's a good chance that Wayne could play a few games for the senior team here in Erin's Isle. He'd get hit but he's going to get hit anyway. It would do him good. I'd like that."

And for Dublin?

"Nah," says Charlie. "We'll just miss each other."

"It'll be a grand a week for playing then," says Wayne, winding Charlie up a little. "Grand a week, Charlie and you'll just be the manager."

"If it's a grand a week I'll be still playing," says Charlie. "If it's a grand a week you'll be chasing foot balls for me when your 84, Wayne."

"No bother," says Wayne, and, they get up and head towards the gate and another big Sunday.