A year or so ago the mention of the New Irelands club or one of its top players would not have set pulses racing in Kilkenny hurling circles. It might have earned a small amount of attention due to the fact that its brightest star was one D J Carey. Otherwise, it was known only as a mostly rural club from Gowran, a place more associated with racing than hurling.
Last year's club championship and this year's All-Ireland series has changed all that and now Young Irelands and, in particular, Charlie Carter are the flavours of the month with Carey having to produce record-breaking scoring feats in order to outdo his club-mate and retain his own particular place in the spotlight.
Carter's own modesty has played a part in a situation which has given Carey and another New Irelands club-mate, Pat O'Neill, a much higher profile. Yet Carter is now regarded - more than at any previous stage in his career - as a player who can contribute significantly to Kilkenny's challenge for their 25th All-Ireland title. When New Irelands finally won their first county senior title last season, the influence of the three county players was seen as crucial to that breakthrough.
All three make enormous contributions to the Kilkenny effort but it is Carter who is emerging, ever more forcibly, as a player who performs a number of different roles, not least taking some of the pressure off Carey.
But Carter is no mere tyro who has come onto the scene from nowhere. He was a member of the Kilkenny minor All-Ireland-winning side of 1988, won an under21 medal in 1990, was a substitute on the All-Ireland senior championship winning side of 1992 and won a National League medal in '95. He also captained the Kilkenny team which lost to Clare in the All-Ireland junior final in 1990. Carter farms about 100 acres in the Gowran area. "We do the lot - dairy, sheep, cattle and horses.
Spare time? What spare time? All I do is farming and hurling. We train three or four nights a week, sometimes five. Hurling is in the family. We have to give time to the club and the county.
"There are Carters (Oliver and Martin) and first cousins called Fitzgerald (Cathal and James) in the New Irelands club. Between the lot of us we form the backbone of the New Irelands team. My uncle Charles is a selector.
"It was great to win the county championship for the first time. There was great excitement and there is great pride that we have three men in the starting line-up for Kilkenny at the moment," he says. As for his own emergence as one of the key players in the present team he has no ready explanation. "I can't explain it really. I just keep plugging away and hope for the best. Maybe I have been getting more of the ball or maybe the ball is getting to me more often.
"The fact is that the team seems to be more confident and this spreads to everybody involved. We were very down after losing to Wexford but the wins over Cork (National League) and Galway (All-Ireland quarter-final) have given us back our drive and our confidence.
"I have seen Clare play twice this year and we respect them but we don't fear them. I don't think there is going to be a lot in it at the end. Everybody seems to think that we should have lost against Galway. But we could have had another couple of goals and we should have stopped at least one of their goals in the first half. It wasn't as bad as it looked and we showed that in the second half."
Making the case for Kilkenny's chances tomorrow, Carter says: "We have had three hard matches and I believe that will stand to us. We are all looking forward to it."
Carter is not apologetic about the way that Kilkenny have come back into the championship after being beaten in the Leinster final. He says: "We didn't make the rules. If Clare were in our position, they wouldn't be complaining. All four teams left are capable of winning the All-Ireland and that means that there will be some great hurling before the championship ends. That is good for the game, I believe."
When the championship is over, Carter will turn his mind to his impending marriage to Maria Whitehead. But, for the moment at least, that takes second place to hurling. His team manager, Nicky Brennan, says that Carter has always shown great promise. At minor, junior and intermediate level he had made an impression and was good enough to be in that All-Ireland squad in 1992.
Brennan describes him as a stylist and an opportunist and somebody who works for the team. "He has great speed and an eye for the posts. I think he has clicked this year and I believe that the victory of New Irelands in the county championship has given him a new confidence in himself."
Everybody who talks about Carter emphasises his speed and skill. Playing at left corner forward he now manages to take a lot of the attention away from Carey and he has proved that, by contributing no less than 1-11 to Kilkenny's total in their last four competitive matches.
Against Dublin in the championship he scored three points from play. He repeated the feat against Wexford and, although he was limited to a single point against Galway, his contribution to the team effort in that match was regarded as an important factor in creating opportunities for Carey when the Kilkenny captain found his brilliant best in the second half to inspire the Kilkenny revival. But one of Carter's most important contributions was in helping Kilkenny to patch up the wounds inflicted by a poor performance in the Leinster final. Against Cork in the National League quarter-final he scored 1-4 as Kilkenny wiped out the bad impression of that poor Leinster final performance.
"When the chips were down, Charlie was one of those who responded in that match against Cork and we all felt better afterwards," says Brennan. "We were not in the best of shape from a morale point of view after the Wexford match but the win against Cork allowed us to put all that behind us." The Kilkenny manager is far from complacent about the task ahead tomorrow. "We are under no illusions. It can be taken for certain that if we concede 3-16 against Clare we will not win the match. Against a team like Clare, we have no chance of scoring 4-15 as we did against Galway.
"No matter what way you look at it, the two best teams in the country at the moment are Wexford and Clare. We are well aware of that. Tipperary may have a different view but they are well able to look after themselves. We know that it isn't going to be easy," he says. Brennan draws come consolation from the fact that Kilkenny have had a much tougher preparation for the match. "Leave aside training - and I know that Clare have worked very hard - we have had a better preparation. We beat Dublin in the championship, lost to Wexford, beat Cork and beat Galway. Clare have had only the one really tough match in the Munster final."
The prospect of an all-Leinster All-Ireland final between Kilkenny and Wexford would cause him no unease. "I think that these two teams have produced some of the best championship hurling within the last 20 years or so. I know that there is always great emphasis on the Munster final but Leinster finals have produced top-quality hurling far more often with Kilkenny-Wexford matches being outstanding on several occasions. It would certainly be a unique occasion and I believe it would produce a marvellous game.
"Getting back to Sunday's match, it seems to me that Clare didn't lose any sleep over the league this year. They seem to have concentrated on winning the Munster title and they will be very hard to beat.
"One thing we have to put behind us is the fact that we were beaten on the last occasion we played in Croke Park. We have that to overcome and also the fact that Galway looked like running away with the quarter-final in Thurles.
"That may be a problem for us but I think we have the players who are capable of responding to that extra challenge. Thurles was not a good experience as far as our defence was concerned in the first half. Three goals and 16 points is a massive total to concede in a game at any level and we can't afford to play like that again if we want to survive," Brennan says. Carter, like the rest of the Kilkenny players, is grateful for the reprieve which the new experimental system has given them.
"After losing to Wexford things were pretty grim but the door was still left open and we have taken advantage of that. I have no great preference about opponents in the final. Clare will not be easy to beat and that is the only thing in our minds at the moment," he says.
It is easy to believe that "back door or no back door" Kilkenny's players intend to make the most of their opportunity and that Carter will be to the forefront of the effort to beat Clare and possibly set up another tilt at Wexford - this time with a bigger prize at stake.
