Primed for final frontier

He came into championship hurling as a 21-year old with a big reputation. Back in June 1995, Fionβn O'Sullivan and his brother John made their championship debuts. But for a great save from Kilkenny's replacement goalkeeper Joe Dermody, Laois might have won instead of losing by two points.

"We were unfortunate," he recalls. "I came home with Eddie O'Connor's jersey. At college in UL the joke was that I'd end up with 10 of them and little else. In the end they were right. If it wasn't for the round robins, I'd hardly even have won a single championship match."

Tomorrow in Nowlan Park, Kilkenny, O'Sullivan captains his club Castletown in the Leinster club final replay against Birr. It is the fourth meeting of the clubs in three years. Despite Birr's lofty status (two All-Irelands and three Leinsters in recent years), the Laois side have held their own in these contests and inflicted on Birr a rare provincial defeat 12 months ago.

County champions for the third successive year, Castletown's confidence has steadily grown. It's five years since Camross took the provincial title to Laois, but whereas they got to beat O'Tooles of Dublin, Castletown always ran into Birr.

The clubs are further entwined this weekend, with Birr's Paddy Kirwan managing the Laois champions. Kirwan is regarded as having had aspirations to manage his own club and this represents an opportunity to press his claims. By way of further coincidence, it was Kirwan who 20 years ago scored a famous winning point against Laois for Offaly, who were on the way to a first All-Ireland.

He admitted before the draw that he knew more about Birr than he did about his own team, which he only took over when the county campaign was under way.

"We always get a manager in the middle of the year when we've got through a few championship matches," says O'Sullivan. "We can't afford to bring someone in for the whole year. Paddy came in and, from the start, said that he wasn't going to make many good friends but that he had a job to do. He's not the easiest to get on with and we've had our ups and downs, but he's very straight, lays it on the line. He has the ambition. He's the advantage of going home to Birr and doesn't have to listen to the pub talk in the county."

He caused some amusement after the drawn match by protesting that this team wasn't a dirty one, "even though we're from Laois".

One Offaly hurling personality bluntly explained the slight gaffe: "I wouldn't say Paddy put a lot of thought into what he said."

O'Sullivan accepts the implications of the remark without demur.

"Well, that's the perception. To be honest you'd dread it a bit, going back to hurling in Laois with the mullocking and hitting and hoping and getting chopped up because protection isn't great. Club rivalry is too great for the good of the county."

As Castletown get used to competing in the Leinster championship, aspirations, says the captain, are being raised.

"We're developing our horizons as we go along. Every year we start slowly as there's always a good few involved with the county and by the time they get back, the season has started. If we're going to get caught in Laois, it'd probably be early on.

"At first you only want to get out of Laois, but by now we're looking at the highest reaches of the Leinster championship. This year we have the subs and young lads coming through. Birr have always had that depth. But there's about 5,000 people in Birr while we've a population of about 500. But if we could get over the Leinster final, I think we'd do well. The young players have no fear. They don't remember getting hammered by 20 points by Portlaoise in the championship years ago."

Castletown has all sorts of motivations. A melancholic one is the amount of loss suffered by the club in recent times. Small as it is, the parish on the main Portlaoise-Limerick road was able to unveil a memorial to young people killed over the last 10 or 15 years. Some of these deaths have directly impacted on the club.

"The hunger has been there," says O'Sullivan. "I don't want to harp on about it but the club has had misfortune.

"We lost two players, Seβn Hanlon - whose father Jimmy is one of the selectors - played left corner back for us. John Cuddy was full back the first time we played Birr and he died of a brain tumour.

And there was a younger player, Matthew Peters, son of club trainer Mick Peters, also killed in an accident. That's a huge amount of tragedy for a small community."

Hanlon had been in phenomenal form and was close to being hurler of the year in the county. His loss has been marked very specifically.

"We retired Seβn's jersey for the year," says O'Sullivan. "So if you're wondering where the number four is, it's just that our left corner back wears 17."

Outside managers have made an impact with the club over the years but within is a cadre of selectors and coaches who keep the hurling going when stakes aren't quite as high. One of them is O'Sullivan's brother John.

"The reason we made the breakthrough is my brother John, who's been involved in coaching us over the years. He really drilled into us hurling that wasn't Laois hurling. It wasn't the hit and hope stuff. There often isn't the confidence in the county to play it fast. Laois hurling is tough; you get stuck in. John emphasised discipline and spreading the play. You get it up first time and if not, let fly. John is an admirer of Offaly hurling and that's the way they play, on the ground and fast."

Fionβn O'Sullivan doesn't feel a sense of frustration at his low-yield career and accepts that these are restrictions imposed by one's place of birth. Anyway, as he points out, his club career has been successful - "winning everything except an under-21" - and at University of Limerick he shared a dressing-room with Clare All-Ireland winners Brian Lohan and Sean McMahon and won a Fitzgibbon Cup medal in the finals weekend in Galway.

Although only 28, he isn't sure about his inter-county future. Work is Dublin-based with IFG financial services in Blackrock, home is in Portobello, and grinding a way through the rush-hour traffic towards training in Laois isn't an enticing prospect at the end of the working day.

Anyway he's waiting to see if he's to be asked onto the panel by new manager Pat Delaney. For the immediate future, nine days before Christmas is not a great time to be playing potentially the biggest match of his career, but O'Sullivan is cheerful.

"In another way it's brilliant. It's an opportunity to take another step towards winning something big with the club and there's a better chance of that happening than with the county."