GAA PROFILE: TONY BROWNE: KEITH DUGGANlooks at the outstanding and extraordinary service which the Mount Sion veteran has given Waterford as a 20th championship season beckons for the veteran

IN THE age of burnout, Tony Browne is the glorious exception. On Sunday, the Waterford man will complete his 20th regular league season for the county and prepare for another All-Ireland championship. Whether or not he starts tomorrow against Galway is irrelevant: he remains a huge part of Waterford’s game plan.

The generation of hurlers with whom Browne shared his first All Star award in 1998 must marvel at the fact that the Mount Sion man is still going. Willie O’Connor, Anthony Daly, Martin Hanamy, Joe Dooley and Charlie Carter were all members of the All-Star selection when Browne, selected at midfield, was also named hurler of the year.

“I say this with the utmost respect but he is one of those freaks of nature,” says Wexford legend Martin Storey, who was named at number 11 that year.

“Tony has a couple of things going for him. He has a natural fitness that is there. So he is not the sort of fella that in January will have to lose a stone and a half. It is a bit easier for someone like that. He really just has to sharpen up. He has two things going for him: one is that he is outstanding. Two is that he is looking for the Holy Grail. He has All Stars and Munster titles and All-Ireland U-21 and he has everything except that All-Ireland medal.

“It is very hard to describe but he has that hunger inside. And he believes that winning it is possible with Waterford. If he didn’t he wouldn’t be there. His performances never reflect his age. He is exceptional. It is something in your biological make-up.”

Storey is well-equipped to talk about longevity and inter-county service. He played with Wexford until the age of 37 and, like Browne, spent much of his career chasing an elusive All-Ireland medal. “I was there 10 years before we won anything. We lost five league finals. It can do your head in because you know that you are as good as any other team.”

And that chase is, he believes, the chief reason that Browne is still lining out for the Déise. “It is extremely rare that you see someone with the longevity and the appetite for the game and still delivering the performance. Because it is not as if Tony Browne is just hanging in there. He is still doing the business for Waterford.”

Storey remembers playing a challenge game about five years ago – when he was in his early 40s – for Oulart against Mount Sion. Inevitably, he and Browne drifted towards one another.

“We beat the head off one another. We boxed and tore into each other because he didn’t want me to get the better of him and I didn’t want him to get the better of me. And that is either there or it’s not there and when it’s there, it’s there forever.”

The peculiar thing is that Browne himself cautioned on the dangers of burnout much earlier in his career. After making his debut with Waterford in 1992, he endured five punishing seasons before the team began going places in 1998. Browne scored 1-3 against Kilkenny in what proved to be an All-Ireland semi-final loss but after the highs of that year’s championship – including the loss of a torrid Munster final replay to All-Ireland champions Clare – Browne felt curiously empty the following season.

He took a few weeks away from the game in the spring of 1999 and that May, he said in this newspaper that he had questioned his desire to continue playing.

“I just totally lost my appetite for the game. There seemed to be nothing else to my life except hurling, hurling, hurling. I was training harder than ever but instead of getting fitter, I seemed to become more exhausted. It got to the point where I was wondering if it was all worthwhile. I felt that I had to put Tony Browne first for once.”

That minor crisis passed but, as he reflected on it that day, Browne said he felt the need to speak out about it because “it’s going to become a problem for the GAA, with future stars who just got burned out”.

That was 11 seasons ago: Browne has seen several of those future stars come and go in the mean time. And slowly but surely the Waterford players that he came through with – like Paul Flynn and Dan Shanahan – have stepped away from the scene. This league produced the most wrenching departure when Ken McGrath called it a day. Browne’s presence is both a testament to his own athleticism and, for Waterford fans, a bittersweet reminder that for all the splendid afternoons they have enjoyed over the last decade, the main prize still eludes them.

But Browne’s contribution remains special. Think back to the Munster final last year, when the veteran swept home a crucial goal in the drawn match and then produced a point in the gloom of that thrilling Saturday night replay in Semple Stadium. Of all the words and comments uttered during last summer’s All-Ireland, surely none matched those expressed by Browne to RTÉ radio’s Pat McAuliffe, who caught the Mount Sion man just after the final whistle.

“I can hardly catch my breath,” said Browne. “It goes to show the character of these young lads. It is just an honour and a pleasure to still be involved with them.”

He turns 38 this July: still a young man in most walks of life and once a common enough digit in the hurling arena also but not anymore. It remains to be seen if Davy Fitzgerald can summon another summer whirlwind from the south east and if that happens, it is hard to imagine Browne won’t be at its centre.

“Tony is an exception. There are not 20 lads like him in Ireland. But at his age, they can’t expect leadership in the way he used to give it,” says Storey. “They can expect advice and co-ordination but I don’t think they can see expect to see him leading the charge. But wouldn’t you have some confidence if you were standing in the line beside him?”