Waiting for a great leap forward

Athenry has surrendered, the whole town listless and unhurried after the day's parching heat. Radio sounds drift out along the street from a coffee shop and a few barmen gaze impassively from doorways.

Tonight is ticket night and, by seven, a long crooked line of people trails gently back from the main ground of the Gaelic park. It's like the first night of the fair. One by one, the hurlers amble in through the crowd. Ollie Fahy, a day on the road behind him, is slouched back in a car seat, flicking through a book of hurling stats. He shakes his head at his own championship return, having no idea that he'd accumulated 3-18 with Galway since 1995. "Did I feck. Hadn't a clue what I scored. Let me see . . . Kevin Broderick 7-13 . . . ouch! Joe Cooney, Joe Cooney . . . 10-102. I've a bit of a way to go. Janey!"

Fahy is in good spirits. The waiting days are over. Hurling fever has, at last, reached this hurling stronghold, descending upon the countryside with the heat.

Of course, there have been similar visitations before. These past five years have seen annual July swellings of optimism and anticipation, the unhappy outcomes of which all form the blurry details of a grim tale. Fahy remembers his first year with the seniors. Clare and the All-Ireland semi-final. He was 19.

"It was a very hot day. Savage. But I'll never forget going out on to the field and the grass was cut and the roar that went up. God almighty. I didn't know what to expect. I don't know if we were favourites that day, but, of course, PJ O'Connell hit that point from 80 or 90 yards and then they pulled away from us in the end.

"But even though we'd lost, I was still on a high coming off. Such an experience, I just couldn't wait 'til next year. Thought I might have an All-Ireland medal before I was 21. Then next year came and I wasn't playing and we were beaten again."

The 1990s have been a decade of woe for followers of Galway hurling. Cursed. In the '96 semi-final, the team fell to a suicidal free-taking percentage, as well as Liam Griffin's rolling Wexford team. A year later, they tangled with Kilkenny in one of the great, classic shoot-outs. Fahy missed out again, having wrecked his finger a few weeks before the game.

"It was a great game, brilliant, but the thing is to come out on top. I suppose we were just caught by Kilkenny. The next year out against Waterford, we felt so sure going out. Just never got out of the blocks. I can't explain what happened then, it was a disgrace."

With last year, though, came something of a rebirth. Mattie Murphy's side hurled Clare to the brink on a mesmerising afternoon in Croke Park. Oh, there was heartbreak at the end of it all right, with Seanie McMahon lifting the sliotar and floating a free over, a point that left them deadlocked.

"There were so many emotions coming back down to Galway after that day. I remember saying then like `what's the problem, what have we to fear from Croke Park?' We'd hurled well there. But for all that, we were sickened not to have won. And Clare were happy to be still there. That showed the next day in the replay."

For the seven days in between, Fahy felt the cloying hands of admiration like never before. Whispered well-wishes from men who privately believed that Galway hurling stopped when Brendan Lynskey did. Fahy spent the Monday at the races.

"I couldn't believe it, just the reaction. I didn't think anyone even knew who I was." Heartening as the prospect of a second day out in Croke Park was, there was a hollow element to the match. It felt wrong.

"We had these injuries to start with, about eight that nobody knew about. Myself and Cloonan had collided and he was unconscious for a while. We weren't right. And when does a team lose two full backs in a game? I thought as well that playing the game on a Monday was a bit disrespectful. Sure no hurler likes to go out on a Monday or a Wednesday. All your life, it's been a Sunday or Saturday."

Monday did fine for Clare. Galway's teary streak was prolonged, but it was argued that the side had turned a corner. As usual, they took to this year's league with ravenous enthusiasm and stampeded allcomers. But there was also a steeliness and method behind the application, a purpose that was evident in the league final win against Tipperary.

That match in Thurles, over two months ago, was Galway's last serious outing. Since then they have existed in that annual limbo which raises the same old questions about their ability to come in cold. But there are no excuses now. This is the year to win.

"You can sing that," agrees Fahy. "From my own point of view, I've spent the last five years hoping, hoping, hoping. Last year, we went into the Clare game having lost things like the league final, the Oireachtas. This time we won those and that breeds confidence. In '96, when we last won the league, Mattie was in charge as well and he saw what happened in the championship that year. We have all learned from that. And I believe we are ready now."

In his street clothes, Fahy looks sort of . . . substantial.

"They call me a light, quick forward. But I'm over six foot tall and 13 1/2 stone. And I ain't the fastest either. (Kevin) Broderick and (Ollie) Canning are fast. Ah, I suppose I can go over 15 yards. Sure, at full forward, you wouldn't want to be going too far."

But he is an essential part of an attack that glitters with potential. Fahy remembers his days as a youngster in Gort. Sylvie Linnane lived up the road from him and it seemed to be a natural part of every September that they'd haul a truck into the square for speeches and singing. The West's Awake. His father brought him to Dublin for those All-Ireland days in the 1980s, but his recollection of the matches are dim. Clearer, though, is his memory of meeting Joe Cooney.

"He'd have been the one you'd make out you were in the back yard. I saw him outside O'Grady's one morning at Mass time. I couldn't believe he was there. To think I'd be hurling with him a few years later."

It's the same for each of the current generation of Galway hurlers. Joe Cooney's enduring presence is talismanic, a direct connection with the halcyon days of the late 1980s. For Galway hurling fans, to see him agile and copper-haired still, is a more poignant experience, a reminder that life, at least where hurling is concerned, was once more certain. In recent years, their discontent has sometimes been voluble.

"They are proud supporters and I can understand the frustration," says Fahy. "Like with the minors and clubs and under-21s doing so well, you'd have to ask why we weren't winning at senior level. They were used to seeing Galway lose finals, but never quarter-finals. And then they'd see Offaly with six or seven clubs going out and winning the whole thing."

There have been no overt promises this July. No dreamy rhetoric. Yet, some nerves have been stoked around these parts. Maybe it's because Tipperary lie in wait on Sunday, Tipperary and all the dormant, mutual loathing which were so fierce a decade ago.

"Sure I was only a laddeen then. But you'd know that there is still a rivalry all right. The thing is we haven't played Tipp in the championship for seven years, so it hasn't a chance to come out. Like, if we played Clare now after last year, there'd be a huge rivalry. But Tipp, I know a few of the lads and what to expect from them. They are strong physical fellas who stand their ground. And see Tipp haven't won an All-Ireland since 1991. They are kinda like Galway, waiting on a break."

Fahy is done with talking and nursing himself with promises of next year. Now is all that counts. When he hits the grass running tomorrow, the same stretch of mowed green that held him mesmerised five years ago, he knows he will have arrived at a definitive crossing. Overcome or face the torment.

"If we lost this, it would kill us," he says, his bright countenance turning solemn for the first time. "I don't know what I'd do over the next year. I'm only 24, but all this, it takes a lot out of a man, you know? I just can't see beyond Sunday now. I don't want to think about it even."

And then Fahy ghosts through the dawdling line of hurling fans, quick-stepping it towards the time. Dusk is well in command across Athenry when the last ticket has been sold.