When Toomevara meet Athenry in their All-Ireland club hurling championship semi-final on Saturday, the Tipperary champions' captain Paddy O'Brien will know the score. For all his club's domination of the county, the dividend has been thin. Last November was only Toomevara's second Munster title, 11 years after the first.

Within the county, rivals such as Kilruane and Borrisoleigh have won the All-Ireland in the 1980s.

"It's an elusive title for us," says O'Brien, "and we get reminded about that an awful lot - not having an All-Ireland."

Last autumn the word was out that Toomevara were going to give the provincial championship a major rattle. Titles aren't handed out on the basis of such decisions but the ferocity in the team's play was noticeable.

"We've been knocking on the door for the last 10 years and there's only a few left from that team so it's a whole new experience for the rest of us. A lot of players have matured. We won county titles in our mid-teens and regularly since but we realised that it's not going to go on forever so finally we got the Munster title and hopefully we can go a bit further."

Anyone sceptical about the intensity of the club's ambitions would have been swayed by the Munster final, a match that looked lost to the Tipp club as they trailed Mount Sion by six points with just 11 minutes on the clock.

Ken McGrath's tour de force for the Waterford club was spoiled at the end when he missed a straightforward free, which could have tied the match.

O'Brien says that he was thinking "of the replay in Walsh Park" when the crucial strike went wide.

Although McGrath was awarded the Man of the Match citation, O'Brien would have been the obvious candidate had it gone to the winners. His clever use of the ball and quality striking from centre forward were the principal factors in Toomevara's recovery. And it was his brother John who clipped what turned out to be the winning point.

That quality has brought O'Brien to the attention of the county team and he was a panellist in the All-Ireland winning year of 2001, coming on as a replacement in the final, which gave Tipperary their last All-Ireland. He would have become a more familiar figure on the intercounty stage but for a succession of injuries.

"I had two operations: disc surgery on my back and tendon surgery on my ankle and a couple of other minor procedures over the past five years so I've been in and out of hurling a lot. I had a shoulder injury with Tipperary as well so thank God I'm on the road to recovery because it's been very frustrating to say the least because over those five years, I've never really gone a full season with Tipperary.

"I did start in the league last year and had a great campaign and then came into the championship and things didn't go so well against Waterford. Then I ruptured ligaments in my shoulder, which put me out for the Limerick and Cork games and after that Tipp were gone so it was great to come back into a club team that was hungry for success."

The new generation produces its own leaders and O'Brien has taken the captaincy in his stride: "I've been captain at underage and I actually like being captain. I know the lads well so I know what to say and do."

He's following in the footsteps of his club-mate and Tipperary's most iconic player of the past decade, Tommy Dunne, who captained the All-Ireland side four years ago.

"Tommy's been a brilliant captain for Tipperary and I personally hope he comes back and captains the county again."