DIARY OF A CAMOGIE MENTOR Tom Humphries muses on the highs and lows of life on the sidelines with his charges at St Vincent's

YEARS AGO myself and my friend Tommy Clancy started off with an idea that we would give a bunch of girls the best time a gang of kids could have on a camogie team together. I don't know if we succeeded but (together with a few other friends) we had had the best of times ourselves. We knew very little but we had a group of key phrases that negated the need for coaching courses. "Two hands on the hurl." "Ah, pull on the thing." "Now you're hurling."

When it came to the rules we distilled centuries of dry law library argument into one beautifully succinct and watertight legal defence: "Ah, ref, the bleedin' ball was there." And there our case always rested.

We raised money any way we could and we visited any club outside of Dublin that would entertain us, telling the girls as they looked dubiously at us in a succession of dank, chilly, rural dressingrooms that this was "what it is all about".

Once we arranged a challenge game in Ratoath in Co Waterford but under a slight misapprehension we travelled to Ratoath in Co Meath, where the surprised locals actually mustered up a team for us to play against. What they were doing in Waterford at that precise time is anybody's guess.

There were days when we fought like dogs on the sideline and days when we just sat back and rejoiced at the sight of our little team. There were sacrifices and, listen, let nobody speak of bravery who has not, as a mentor, taken a sliotar full on the testicles from a 14-year-old girl and just carried on smiling as if nothing had happened.

There were moments we would never forget. A series of famous (to us) games at the All-Ireland Féile, beating Toomevara, beating Glen Rovers, getting hammered in Páirc Uí Chaoimh by Douglas in the final. You've never seen such tears but 20 minutes later the craic started again.

Two years later we had Douglas up to the club in St Vincent's and at 3am as the Cork girls slept in our houses with their Dublin pals we mentors found ourselves in the club bar at the end of a long night of singing and, uhm, bonding.

We were standing in a big circle holding hands singing the I Love You, You Love Me song from Barney. We swore a blood oath together the next morning we would never speak of the incident but word got out and now it's every man and woman for themselves in explaining how they got mixed up in such a thing.

Apparently the Barney song is a tradition in Douglas.

There were moments that still make me laugh. Earnestly telling them all in the lead-up to a big match they were to be in bed by midnight on the night before the game. A silence followed as they weighed this. And then an earnest enquiry from Carol McDonnell: "Eh, what time is midnight at?"

Or Leanna Byrne, who grew into stardom late but was, at that point, one of those subs who only got on late in games the outcome of which could not be altered by her presence. One day Leanna is standing beside me on the sideline late in a match as I give her the instructions. "Now, Leanna, you are going in at full forward, you know the story." "Yes," nods Leanna earnestly." Leanna comes on. Ref blows final whistle. Leanna comes straight off. "Oh!"

Or our second-last game. A championship semi-final against Na Fianna. In local terms they are Rangers. We are Celtic. We are all hyped up. So are they. Last words in a huddle before we all go out onto the pitch. "Now, girls, for all the years we have been together, all the work, all the friendships, all that this team means, lets go out on a high note." A pause. Tension you can cut with a knife. And then from Johanna Clancy a perfect High C issued at such an altitudinous octave that only ourselves and some nearby dogs can hear it. We crease into helpless laughter and the girls hit the pitch a giggling, howling rabble. And win.

Tommy, Eddie and Seán are taking a rest now as they hover on the brink of senility but me, being a much younger man, I'm still at it, at the beginning of a journey with another very special team, telling them the secret of perfect happiness is two hands on the hurl and pulling hard, explaining to them that cold, wet days on the windswept tundra in the Phoenix Park are "what it is all about".

I don't know if they believe that, but I do.