Hurling All-Ireland SHC final countdownSeán Moran examines the phenomenal success of an institution that has become hurling's top academy

It's an obvious place to locate a hurling academy.

Surrounded by the hurling counties of Cork, Tipperary, Kilkenny and Wexford. The only anomaly about the Waterford Institute of Technology is the comparatively small number of hurlers that the home county has sent through its improving confines.

Six days from this year's All-Ireland final WIT continues to be as relevant to the season's climax as it has become in recent years. The past two Hurlers of the Year, Tommy Dunne and Henry Shefflin, are graduates and their respective teams, Tipperary and Kilkenny, won All-Irelands with seven and nine of their panels having the same background.

This year Kilkenny are back again and opponents Cork also have a connection. This year's rookie sensation Setanta Ó hAilpín cut his teeth in Waterford and was member of WIT's Fitzgibbon-winning side last March.

Nonetheless, Kilkenny are the principal beneficiaries of what has become the game's great finishing school. Centre back Peter Barry and Shefflin are examples - like Ó hAilpín - of players who didn't shine as brightly as might have been expected at minor intercounty level but whose spell in Waterford helped elevate them to the top of the senior game.

Barry played on the 1995 Fitzgibbon-winning team with Colm Bonnar, the Tipperary All-Ireland winner and WIT Clubs and Societies Officer whose association with the college goes back to his undergraduate days in the mid-1980s.

"If people saw Peter back when he was first here with his unorthodox left swing they'd never have seen the player he is today. But he was one fella you wouldn't like to mark in Fitzgibbon - he was so dogged and tough. He kept at it."

Of the team that started the semi-final against Tipperary, six won Fitzgibbon Cup medals with WIT and of the panel a further five have the same distinction.

"Unless you're going to go to a traditional university Waterford's an obvious choice," says Leinster chairman Nicky Brennan, a former All-Ireland-winning Kilkenny hurler. "If you're in Kilkenny city it's just a bus trip away and if you're in digs in Waterford it's not too far to go home at weekends."

WIT is a godsend for a county like Kilkenny with a steady supply of provincial-winning minor sides. "A minor could struggle to step up," says Brennan. "For players who go to Waterford it's a help in moving to a higher level."

The institution that has played such a prominent role in the development of elite hurlers is remarkable in its own right. The world of higher-education hurling in which WIT is now such a dominant force was for most of the last century the preserve of the universities and their ability to perpetuate tradition.

But within the space of a couple of decades Waterford has forged its own strong identity. On October 23rd, WIT's GAA club celebrates its 21st anniversary with a US trip - open to alumni as well as students.

The club was founded by Eugene McKenna, a lecturer from Monaghan who believed in the value of a GAA club in the fledgling college, originally Waterford RTC.

Everyone who talks about the evolution of Gaelic games in Waterford pays tribute to McKenna's enduring effort to establish and sustain the club.

Donie Nealon is the outgoing secretary of the Munster Council. A decorated Fitzgibbon Cup hurler with UCD in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nealon has been involved and interested in the development of WIT.

"It's the leading club within the college and one of the leading GAA clubs in any college in terms of profile and the work rate of those involved," he says.

Nonetheless its origins were - to understate - humble. Former Waterford hurler and selector Shane Ahearne remembers how humble.

"Eugene McKenna would be the perfect administrator in any club. In 1983 he came to me and Ray Heffernan (from Kilkenny, a brother of All-Ireland winner Christy) and asked would we give it a go. The RTC was in Division Three (of the Higher Education League) at the time and we wouldn't have been involved.

"What used to happen was that the club would play its first game, get a beating and wouldn't bother turning up for the rest of the fixtures. Eugene had given a guarantee that this wouldn't happen again and asked us to help."

Heffernan and Ahearne looked at the resources and realised that there were quite a number of promising Kilkenny minors around.

The new sense of purpose was so impressive that Division Three was duly won with Heffernan as captain and, a year later, Ahearne led the side that added the Division Two title. "We were the first RTC to qualify for Division One," he says, "but by then myself and Ray were gone."

Life at the top was initially hard. A succession of sound beatings from the aristocrats of third-level hurling seemed destined to end in relegation. But a big win in the Ryan Cup (the non-university competition) changed the future.

"I think we beat Mary I (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick), who had qualified for promotion to take our place in Division One," says Colm Bonnar.

"They wrote to the authorities to say that there was really no point in them going up to Division One, as we had been getting beaten for fun and had still beaten them so easily. So we were allowed another year."

The stay of execution was put to good use. Within a season Waterford had become the first RTC to win Division One. This helped bring to a head the anomalous situation governing the Fitzgibbon Cup.

"A very sore subject," is Bonnar's way of describing the exclusion of the non-universities from higher-level hurling's elite competition. In 1988 the barriers came down. By this stage Bonnar had been appointed WRTC's GAA Development Officer - the country's first.

The first Fitzgibbon was a bit of a mortification.

Bonnar reckons it was simply "inexperience", but having reached the finals weekend in Belfast, Waterford crashed to defeat against host club Queens, against whom they had scored "something like 6-23" when the teams had met in the league.

After watching NIHE Limerick (now UL) become the first non-university side to win the Fitzgibbon in 1989, WRTC eventually broke through with a first Fitzgibbon victory three years later. Over the last 11 years Waterford have won five Fitzgibbons.

There's no secret about the success. "Geographically, it's in the middle of hurling territory," says Nealon. "They've been able to field teams to win the A and B Freshers competitions this year and in other years the A and B teams have met in the final. They've also appointed very good development and promotion officers and been blessed with people like Colm Bonnar, Paraic Fanning and Conor Power."

"That spirit sets the club apart," adds Bonnar. "It's so close-knit. You don't have players spread over a huge area. We're still small."

Small college, big achievement.