All-Ireland SHC Final / The O hAilpin Brothers: Tom Humphries talks to two of the greatest hurlers of their generation about life, family and going out.

In Semple they were never boys. Always giants. Hurling and flaking. Driving and shouting. Striding the world. Every sweet day the same. Ignoring all injunctions to go handy, to rest up, to take care. Obeying only the sun, it’s morning call, it’s evening farewell. Dinner in between. The posts were steel with a wooden crossbar. Still are.

Sometimes their mother, Emeli, would stand underneath them goaltending, refereeing, threatening the sanction of "No Dinner" for anyone who flaked too hard or tried too little. Five of them on summer days in Blarney, roaring in Fijian in a garden called Semple.

And the sliotars would escape. Fugitives from the Ó hAilpín fury. Off with them, scarpering into the long grass of the Osborne farm beyond, where they would be munched eventually by agricultural machinery. Within the jurisdiction the boys had an ingenious sliotar-recovery system. Goats.

They’d tether one of their two goats near where a sliotar was last seen and in half a day the animal would have eaten all the grass around the ball. Hey presto! "They’re gone about a year now," says Setanta of the goats. "Passed away. You’d miss them around."

"They saved us a few bob alright," says Seán Óg. "Arrah, most of the balls would have been compliments of Páirc Uí Chaoimh anyway," says Setanta with a huge impulsive laugh. Myself and Theu, we had a thing going when I was young and he was playing. He’d hit all the balls out to me behind the goals."

As long they are hurling they reckon the goalposts will always be there. Emeli christened it Semple long ago and it became the field where their dreams took wings.

This summer Seán Óg and Setanta have outgrown boyhood dreams. Tomorrow they will have 70 minutes of outsized reality. Seán Óg the swashbuckling wing back. Setanta, the lightning rod of the Cork attack, the hand that reaches, the legs that dance.

"In the dressing-room we say take the flakes and Joe (Deane) takes the scores!" says Setanta. That’s what Semple out there is for," says Seán. "Mum would go goal. She’s no Brendan Cummins but she’d get something to it. Too many goals and it’s no dinner. So we’d go for points. There’s no flaking like what we did to each other out there."

The teams were always the same; eldest and youngest versus the middle pair. Seán Óg and Aisaki versus Theu and Setanta. somebody was missing it was every man for himself. Once years ago Seán Óg threw up the ball and Aisaki came in and

blocked early. The ball was gone.

Seán Óg’s swing unhindered. "I split him. Huge gash above the eye." "You split him that day," says Setanta. "And about two years later I split him on the other eye. We still laugh about it. I whipped on the ball, he slid in and I missed him. Next we went again. He slid, I pulled. I hit him a flake. The blood started gushing. We rushed him to hospital."

Rushed is a qualified term. Their Dad was working. Emeli doesn’t drive. The boys were too young to steer a car. So they improvised a Bobby Ryan bandage, wrapped it on Aisaki’s head and walked the couple of miles into Blarney, then caught

the bus to Mercy Hospital.

Seán Óg was 15 at the time. He was in charge of the expedition. By the time they got to Mercy. Aisaki looked as if he’d laid his head down on a landmine. Blood everywhere. Only a family could enjoy telling that story as much as the Ó hAilpíns do.

If Semple doesn’t tell you enough about what kind of family Seán Ó hAilpín dreamed of having when he was labouring in Australia and Fiji, then two minutes in the homestead will. None of the homogenised units and surfaces that make every

house look the same as every other house.

This is a home. Faded cuttings concerning Fermanagh football and its readiness hang on the walls. Old All Star selections. Fijian souvenirs. Outside in the shed there are a million hurleys. Three million sliotars. Jerseys flap on the line. Mantelpieces

groan with medals and trophies.

Seán met Emeli while he was working on the small island of Rotuma back in the 1980s. They married. They moved to Sydney. Finally one rainy winter they moved to Ireland and Fairhill in North Cork. Seán Óg was 11 or so at the time. He joined Na Piarsaigh. Went to North Mon. His three brothers followed. The girls, Soroti and Etain, went similar paths.

Now the house is a babel of language: Irish, Fijian and English for the visitors. Everyone speaks with passion and nthususiasm. GAA is the common language. They could never have known what they would become. Two of the sons are superstars. Another lives in America. The last, the hapless Aisaki, played in Croke Park twice this summer for Cork

minor sides. When they came to Cork first it wasn’t the dreamland that had been promised them. Seán still gets asked how he met Emeli, how she came to be here.

He likes to amuse himself with stories about how he had to go to meet the Tribal Chief and he was set several challenges and conquests. Sounds better than saying that she was behind the reception desk in the place he was working on.

In Cork, Seán Óg played rugby league. Nobody else in Cork did. Seán Óg spoke with a thick Sydney accent. Nobody else in Cork did. Other stuff too. Not that they consider it worth speaking about now. "Arrah we would have got a bit but not much," Says Seán "In fairness, even Dad knew the scenario. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘You’ll be subject to it.’ He said to take it

and get on with it.

"Living up Fairhill at the start you’d get a few comments. Ye’re only black cunts or whatever. We just went on. Because to be honest there was another 20 hanging behind if we didn’t. Then since we started hurling with Na Piarsaigh it just dwindled away."

"A fella once told me," says Setanta, "that if someone is bothered going out of his way to call you something, it’s a compliment in a way. I used smile at them!" And on the pitch they thrived to the extent that they just got hurling abuse. I’ll take you’re head off, if you do that again. More compliments.

The strangeness of the world they left behind, the strangeness of their lives now, these things seldom occur to them. Last summer Emeli went home to Rotuma for the first time in 14 years.

There are about two and a half thousand people on the island and they live with sand between their toes and sun on their backs. Emeli brought a video of Seán Óg playing in an All-Ireland final. They found a machine to put the video in. All of Rotuma was shocked. Not by the stickwork.

By the crowd. "Are those all really people?" they asked. "It was a good summer for Mum to go," says Seán Óg laughing. "Cork were beaten early. She didn’t have championship work."

Championship work. Emeli is about it now. She asks if you’ll have pasta. Her boys say no, you’ll have dinner. She’s lifting big steaks from the cooker to the plates. Each steak weighs as much as a small child. Then suddenly there is a range of vegetables on the table, a mountain range. The potatoes at the top of the pile are cooling at altitude. The pasta is there too but just in case that’s not enough Emeli produces a large colander filled with roast chicken. Everytime the Ó hAilpíns sit at table it’s a holocaust in the chicken world.

"The day we quit hurling is the day we all become 40 stone," says Setanta. "Just eat," says Emeli.

The house is filled with food and with hurling and with talk and with love.

Setanta is hunched over his steak. The kid is something new to hurling. Something luminous and effervescent. Good-looking beyond reason, talented beyond fairness and unpredictable with it. They’ll love him or they’ll hate him but they’ll never have to use his surname.

There was Seán Óg. There is Setanta. John Allen, the Cork selector, reckons Setanta will

have his own cult at the end of the year. He’ll certainly have his imitators. Back in Blarney, he takes the longest in the bathroom in the morning because of the Del Piero, the pencil-thin beard that delineates his jaw. Much eye-rolling around the table.

"Ah, the Del Piero. It ’s only a five-minute job once you have the gimmicks." "Every morning, though?" "Sure it keeps me busy. That ’s why I’m late for work."

"He has to get it right," says Seán Óg. "He has to get an examiner to look at it. Usually Aisaki. He’s The Examiner."

"That ’s because Aisaki is the real Don Juan in our family," says Setanta.

Seán remembers days long ago and not so long ago training with the club, flat out and earnest as ever and Setanta would be hanging off the goalposts upside down. Abie Allen, the coach, would be driven to dementia. "Setanta stop hanging off the goalposts! Get down, ya divil!"

He was well known always. He was the fella who’d get the sliotars behind the goal and hit them back out. At the end of the night they ’d throw him a ball for his troubles. That and the couple he had in his pocket would make it worthwhile.

Setanta was always the wildest. For everything. For hurling, for women, for the crack.

"I ’m a person who keeps driving on," he says, elaborating on the hurling part. "I’ve lost a few county medals and a few other medals. You think life is over. It ’s the fella who goes back the next day and keeps practising that gets there. Once you learn from it as a person you’ll grow and winning will be sweeter."

In the meantime it ’s hard being young and devoted to the monastery of Cork hurling. The vows chafe against a young man ’s instincts. Evenings driving through the village of Blarney, Seán Óg and Setanta have the windows rolled down and there’s fellas of their own age loitering at the bus stop. The hurlers can smell them. They can inhale the fragrance of whatever has been slapped on all over.

Some days the brothers will drive on and say nothing. Other days one will turn to the other and say: Fuck it boy, what are we at this for? Is it worth it?

"To be honest it is," says Seán Óg. "You’ve got to make a difference in this life. Being involved in sport has made a difference for us compared to the fella standing at the bus stop on a Saturday night going into town. A night before the Munster final we’re worrying and not sleeping and we’re looking at the fella who’s just worrying if he’ll pull somebody. You’d wish it was you sometimes."

"But listen," says Setanta. "As Donal Óg Cusack says, it’s memories of matches and fellas you played with that you’ll bring to your grave. He’s right. That’s Donal Óg’s famous quote."

Has Setanta got a famous quote yet? "Give the ball to me!" says Seán Óg.

Setanta has always been, and still is, a work in progress. In Na Piarsaigh, in Cork underage teams, in college. Always developing.

At the time when Seán Óg went to North Mon. It was a bona fide fame academy for hurling. Times are harder there now. It took Setanta four or five years to win a Harty match. Just one.

"A great game. We beat Limerick CBS in the first round. Donal O’Grady was manager. Stop boy!"

"WIT made me feel like a better player again. What brought me on was going down to IT hurling with Tipp, Kilkenny, Wexford people. The amount of hurling you do. Hurling with Henry Shefflin, Brian Dowling, JJ Delaney. Great hurlers. You look at them on telly and think you actually played with them and fought for a cause with them. To be meeting them in a final is sweet."

In WIT he became "Santy ". Too many players couldn’t get their tongue around his name when he was in possession and they wanted to stress how urgently they required a pass. Santy he was and Santy he is to much of the hurling world he has been introduced to this year.

A year late, according to Seán Óg. "To be honest he should have been on the team last year. There were trial games and Setanta would clean up but he was never picked. Last year, when I think of it, for the Waterford match he was hurley carrier. And he was cleaning up in A versus B matches.

"I remember one match and all the players were saying he definitely has to play. They didn’t bring him on the panel even. He was involved with the 21s and they got knocked out and they asked him would he do hurley carrier again for the Galway game." And? "First plane out of here," says Setanta.

He went to New York. Labouring on sites. Hurling with Limerick. Footballing with Kerry. Living with Theu in the Bronx. Watched Cork and Galway on the telly in a pub. Came back with a huge hunger.

"I played the summer with Theu. I wanted to come back and play for Cork. Seán Óg has been my driving point. As a young fella I always looked up to him. Everyone loved him. He was the kiddie on the block when I was young, now he’s telling me what to do, giving me great encouragement. I love going training with him. We’ve a bond between us, brothers. A bond that will never be broken."

They talk hurling all the time. It dominates the house. Not a day that goes by, without training, matches, treatment. Something.

The replays are made over the kitchen table, then out on Semple. They talk about each other easily and with ferocious loyalty. Setanta remembers Seán Óg breaking through to stardom and the buzz of it, the added weight of all fraternal advice, the thrill of just standing behind the goals at Cork training, watching his brother.

Seán Óg thinks his own pre-eminence has made it harder for Setanta. "People expect things from him too quickly. It’s a burden but he’s carried it great. They think he should have something scored before he his laces."

"The best advice I got was from Joe Deane," says Setanta. "Before my very first game, against Clare, we were on the bus. Joe said if you touch the ball today it’s a bonus.

"That stuck. If I touch it. If bring a man away. It’s up to the old fellas, he said. At the time was thinking this fella now thinks I’m cat –I’ll be doing well to touch a ball. He thinks O’Grady picked me because I went to Mon and we bate his team in Harty.

"After the game I realised what he meant though. That I was head down and the sweat was dripping off me. I was scared, boy."

He was scared and the abiding memory of him that day is getting a massive dunt in the corner of the field early on and him leaping to his feet shaking his fists, suddenly energised beyond fear. Everything beyond that is legend.

"Listen," says Seán, leaning across the table. "In this house it’s an undisputed fact that pound for pound Setanta is the best product of the family. We’d have our own strengths but he has all those in the one." He pauses. Takes a drink of milk.

"I can see why he was Dad’s number one pet for years," Emeli joins in. "No doubt! The golden boy!" "He got away with murder," says Seán Óg. "Too cute. He ’s a special kid like."

Now everywhere he goes people want a part of him. He loves it. Special upbringing.

"It ’s good, "He says. "Nice people have the bit of interest, fairness. Memories like that what you’ll have when you are older. People took the time to talk to you and see how you getting on once upon a time. Once upon a time, right at the beginning.

"You know," says Seán Óg, "even when I was that age I wasn’t as ..." "Wired to the moon?" says Setanta. "No. Outgoing. He’s like a stallion can’t keep on a rope." Seán Óg. School. Club. Home. That’s the radius of his life, he says. I ’s a life that ’s reached mid-point in hurling terms.

Once upon a time he thrilled just to wear red. Thrilled for Abie Allen and Tom Walsh in the club. His glory was theirs. Now he’s a lifer, a long-haul He’s glad to see Na Piarsaigh men coming up behind him. Setanta keeps him fresh. The older he got the more cynical got and then suddenly this summer he had this young fella beside him who had wide eyes and scarcely a worry in the world. He'd listen to his comments and say, Jesus Christ but it's good to be young like.

It's knocked a few years off him though.

He' s protective but in a big picture way. He didn't keep Setanta out of the Paddy Power fiasco as was widely reported earlier in the year. It just happened that way.

The man came calling, collecting the hurleys of the relevant players. In Blarney that night Setanta was marked absent. He'd gone to play for the Cork under-21s against Tipperary. The sort of date upon which a man brings his best sticks.

Seán Óg gave the man a few planks from the shed, but when Setanta came in and learned that his inferior hurleys were up in Dublin for tattooing he realised he had only one thing to do. Get Seán Óg to call. Paddy Power were good about it and it's small beer.

Seán Óg worries about other stuff. His own biggest mistake was not being careful. He had the arrogance of a kid when it came to his own body. Thought he was bulletproof. Invincible.

On the day he's thinking of he drove to Dublin instead of taking the train.

"Dad told me that Thursday to get the train. To do the smart thing. Guinness were doing this promotion in Dublin. I said 'arrah I'll drive'. It cost me two years. Before that I never had a hamstring, a groin. The last thing I thought was I'd be in a car crash."

He was rushing home. He was near Copland, closing in on Templemore. Invincible and rash. He went to overtake a fella where he shouldn't have.

Suddenly, there was a car coming the other way. Blue with lights flashing. Seán Óg couldn't tuck back in. He said the quickest prayer, hit the break and braced himself. Serious pain suggested he was alive. He opened his eyes.

"Yeah. Fuck it I'm alive. I was in shock. There was this excruciatng pain in the right leg. I had chinos on. There was a lump near the pocket."

His knee cap had shot gone like a hockey puck inside his leg. His car was written off. The blue car was written off. Its five occupants poured out of its doors while Seán Óg was locating his patella.

"They came out safe and sound and I'm happy with that. If one of them had passed away, you couldn't live with it. You couldn't go on. I was conscious. Pain. Shock. The people I hit, came over and tore down the door on my car. The car I was overtaking had zoomed off. There was just the two of us. Me and them. They opened up the door. To be honest they were in shock too. The driver had a face on him. He was going to kick the shit out of me and rightly so. What got me off was they recognised me. Tipp lads."

"Fuck. You're not Seán Óg."

"Yeah."

"You got a match Sunday. Limerick. Don't think you'll make it."

"Maybe."

They pulled him out. He was screaming His right leg buckled. They carried him to the ditch sat him down and called 999 from his mobile. He never heard from them again.

"I got operated on. I'd ruptured the patella tendon. They had to get the kneecap back down and stitch the tendon."

Cork were due to play Limerick on that Sunday. They lost by a point on the day when Diarmuid O'Sullivan scored that point from about 500 yards. Seán Óg watched from hospital. Brian Corcoran was missing too, finger broken in a match up in Enniscorthy. Seán Óg watched on telly and then faced defeat. Summer was empty.

"When the cast came off, my leg was wasted away. It was like an image from the third world. I had to go through rehab. I got in touch with Ger Hartmann. He was brilliant and he was realistic. I'd thought that if Cork got over Limerick I'd be back for the Munster final that year. When they said 12 months, the jaw dropped like a fella in the cartoons."

He came back in 2002. He could run but he couldn't get into games. His touch was red raw. No speed. No stick work. All gone. He'd thought to prove them all wrong, to show he could be as good again but it was a disaster of a year.

"I'm only looking for the form now. The way I look at it, the old fella is done and dusted. I'm the new version now. With a rehab knee. I play the percentages. I loved covering for everyone, all over the place. Now I do my own patch. I do that and that's it. That's all I can hope for out of it. Days like we had this year made it worthwhile.

"I just wanted to get back to prove to myself that I could. This summer, the knee is as good as it ever will be. In the winter with the cold it hurts. I've changed my training habits, I warm-up out in Semple here with Setanta before going in training. I use hot water bottles, the ice bath. The knee will never be the same but I can run, turn and jump. It's enough."

Growing up in this house, if they wanted a pair of boots Seán would reach into his pocket and find whatever it took. Fifty, 60 punts. Whatever. If they wanted Mars bars there was no jingle forthcoming. No money for rubbish.

Seán had a dream of Ireland and Irishness. His family lived it with him. He drove his boys in and out to training, waiting in the car for them to finish. He'd often watch Cork training sessions rather than drive home and have to turn around and drive back to Cork almost immediately. It was the habit of a lifetime.

Most mornings he'd be out the gap and down the road at eight a.m. and he'd collect the boys in the evenings and bring them training and wait and watch because he'd no time to go home.

His boys each outgrew the other and all of them outgrew him. Seán Óg was surpassed by Theu who is overshadowed by Setanta who is just beginning to be eclipsed by Aisaki.

For years he brought his boys to games and afterwards shook his head and sang the same lament.

"I don't care if you have no ability, what I can't understand is a fella not going out and not giving 100 per cent. "

They laugh at him now. His love for Fermanagh. His old fashioned grá for the GAA. But he and Emeli are at the centre of their solar system.

"Dad always forgot to tell us we had some ability. That's what he always kept secret. Everything for us was just giving 100 cent. It was kind of surprise to grow up and find we had some ability as well. Dad gave us that work ethic."

Hence they think, Aisaki has great ability but being the youngest, growing up with stars, maybe the work ethic is slower.

How do you think you played. Setanta? Brilliant! Three goals.

And Seán would be shaking his head slowly.

"Did you count the balls you wasted? You forgot what you were told the last game. Did you learn nothing?" And with talks like that and Emeli roaring in Fijian from the sideline, they grew up, grew towards this summer and tomorrow.

What a unique gift they are to the game. On semi-final day in Croke Park they were to be found last out of the Cork dressingroom, two sublime contributions behind them each wondering if the other had the hair gel. They wondered as Gaeilge, switching to English when approached.

Dinner is over now in their home of hurling. Language becomes fragmented as people rise. Fijian by the sink. Gaeilge trailing into the sitting-room. They could play forever they think and not have another summer like this.

Donal O'Grady met their passion and matched it this summer. In the dressingroom this afternoon his words to them will be in Irish as always. They laugh when they think of him badgering them in training. A ball will be picked one handed. "Dhá láimh in ainm Dé," he will bellow.

On Sean Og's first day back training this year he forgot about Donal O'Grady, not having seen him since school days. He was 10 minutes late.

"Ah Donal, good to see ya," I said, "but he fecked me out of it. Jimmy Barry, Tom Cash, anyone. There'd have been nothing said. For Donal training at seven means seven on the pitch. If you're late he'll warn you and he'll let you know he can get someone else who'll come at seven. After the first incident you just tell yourself you'll never be late again.

"With other managers it was always 'lads you're good enough, go out and do it'. With Donal we analyse the opposition, what they've got, what they do. This that and the other. He runs the shop like a school. Abide by the rules. If you don't like it move to a new school. This year, well it's hard for us older lads to grasp. We're not used to it. We're used to taking it seriously on the pitch but being late for training or having a bit of crack, if you're chatting when you are stretching it's 'lads I hear you talking. You're not focussed lads.' It wouldn't be popular but it's gotten results."

It pays off. O'Grady lives to see Cork doing well. Bottom line. He told the squad early this year that Croke Park was built for Cork to be playing there. That they should be there every year. They went home and thought about it. If Kilkenny could do it, Cork could.

The Ó hAilpín boys list off the influences. O'Grady is high on the list for both of them. Shared language. Shared love.

In Blarney life is simple and life is Semple. Hurling is family and hurling is oxygen.

"We live it," says Seán Óg, "twelve months of the year really."

"But winter is easier," says Setanta, "winter is our summer time. We might get to see Cork city on a Saturday night."

"Yeah" says Seán Óg softly "An rud is annamh is iontach."