Leinster Club HC Ballyboden St Enda's v Oulart-the-Ballagh:Ballyboden are Dublin's great enigmas, which is one reason tomorrow's game fascinates, writes Tom Humphries

So the scene shifters move on and rearrange the stage a little and we regroup in Parnell Park tomorrow for a new act in the hurling year. The Leinster club championship. Two teams in search of validation.

Oulart-the-Ballagh have become a reliable if underachieving turn in this theatre over the last decade-and-a-half but the potential of Ballyboden St Enda's is just to be guessed at. It would be no surprise to see the Dublin club well beaten. Nor would it raise an eyebrow if they won handily.

It has taken so long for the hurling revolution in Ballyboden to percolate through to this level nobody is quite sure what to expect. The hope is that having been liberated from the weight of their perennial failure to land a Dublin title Ballyboden are ready to cut loose. If they do, if they play to their potential, they could hurt any side in the province.

David Curtin didn't start in the county final, played under lights on Friday night a fortnight ago, but knowing - well, hoping - he might be needed, he sat down the night before and cut off the cast protecting his injured hand.

The injury was still achingly sore and will probably keep him out tomorrow but with the game wrapped up towards the end Ballyboden popped Curtin on for a run anyway.

Given Curtin had endured a decade of senior championships each of which had started with high hopes and ended in postmortems it was a meet and fitting gesture. Curtin's tale is virtually the story of Ballyboden hurling: plenty followed by famine.

"I came on to the senior team around 17 or 18 thinking we'd win loads of titles. I'm 27 now. This year was my fourth county final and the first win - which made it all the better. We lost to Craobh Ciarán twice (2001 and 2006) by a point and to UCD (2004) by three points and lost a lot of semi-finals in between. This was a monkey off our backs. It was a relief more than anything to get it."

Curtin grew up a few doors away from Conal Keaney, and for a while before football seduced Keaney, both trod the boards together on Dublin senior hurling teams. A couple of years separate them in age but they both grew up in an opulent time in Ballyboden. Curtin has three Dublin minor championships to his name and four under-21 medals. Keaney isn't precisely sure but thinks he may have four of each. It's enough to say that from the early to mid-90s until a few years ago the club's dominance of Dublin underage hurling was scary and almost complete.

Keaney and Curtin spent many years tussling with each other on the green at the end of their road but went to school in St Colmcille's, Knocklyon, where Curtin now teaches.

"This is the place it got going," says Curtin. "Hurling is hugely popular here; it's the main sport. It's from here we all joined the club.

"There are three nurseries really: here, Scoil Treasa in Firhouse - my da was principal there for years - and St Mary's, Rathfarnham. There is just a huge hurling interest in those schools and they all come through Ballyboden.

"The club is lucky to have great mentors so hurling has always been massive. You see the kids out with hurls in their hands far more so than soccer balls at their feet. Every young fella wants to hurl; they're out practising against a wall or down at the ball alley.

"We start in primary, trying to win the Herald Cup, move on to club, the battles for Féile and into Coláiste Éanna and the secondary schools, all in the same catchment area."

Back in the 1970s a trip to Ballyboden was the sort of expedition other Dublin clubs prepared for like polar explorers. The city swallowed the club up though and left it with a vast and complicated hinterland to cater for. Ballyboden rose to the challenge. Somehow through work and enthusiasm they created a hurling culture from nothing.

Bafflingly, the club graduated stylish hurlers year after year in the Dublin underage championship without winning a thing at senior.

"I know it was said that we are flaky or windy and that certain clubs just had to sew it into us to beat us," says Keaney. "But I think it's just that there is more to Dublin hurling than putting 15 stylish players out on the pitch. We'd play a lot of challenges down the country and do well and come home thinking that because we did well down there we could translate that in Dublin. But teams like the Craobh make you earn the right to hurl. It's a physical game too and being stylish doesn't guarantee you anything."

That perception of Ballyboden teams being a bit windy became quite widespread in the capital. In last year's final what was a poor Craobh Ciarán side by the club's recent standards managed to beat a Boden team who looked so determined to prove they weren't afraid they forgot to just go and win the game.

This year against St Vincent's there were some winces when they conceded an early goal and watched Emmet Carroll hit the woodwork soon after. The faithful would have been forgiven for thinking they were in for a night of the same old, same old - but Ballyboden recovered to win handily.

And so they hit the open territory of the Leinster hurling championship and, unusually for first-timers, it holds fewer fears for them than Dublin did. They know the style they will encounter.

"All year we've been going down the country playing these teams in challenge games," says Curtin. "We drew with Portumna, drew with Oulart, went to Rathnure and places like that. You get good experience going down playing these challenge games and now that we have got out of Dublin we'd feel that there is more in the tank.

"Some teams would be happy to have the county final won. We celebrated for a few days but we were back training on the Tuesday. We told ourselves we had another chance, another cup there for us."

If they find their feet tomorrow they are equipped to do well. Keaney still retains the potential to be the best hurler in the county and for the past month or so has been devoting himself fully to the game again.

"I get up very early and go down to the alley in the club for a bit of privacy or practise out in the back garden on the wall there. At first my striking wasn't where it should have been and my touch was bad enough but it comes back. Hurling is a game where the more you do away from the training and matches on your own the more it will show. It's coming back. "

Keaney returning to anything like the player he could be would be a huge bonus. Curtin's injury vanishing will be another.

Then there is the size and quality of Ballyboden's panel. Young players like Simon Lambert, Shane Durkin, Finn McGarry, Niall McMurrow, Peter Buckeridge, Eanna Walsh, Michael McGarry and Paul Ryan would be pushed onto the senior team in any club in Dublin. In Ballyboden there isn't room for them yet. Despite glittering underage careers most are bit players on the senior stage.

"We have a training panel of 37 or 38 this year," says Curtin, "and four adult teams. We lose some good players who don't break through immediately but I think even if there was another club set up in the area Ballyboden would always be the centre for hurling around here."

They start a new adventure tomorrow. After the long wait for a senior county title the celebrations were brief and intense but at training the following Tuesday they looked at themselves and decided they could get another cup this season.

Keaney, whose form should be getting better every day, knows he is part of something special.

"The club could go ahead and win a few county titles now but we know as well that everyone will be out to get us. It's down to us how we use what we have. We always said if we could make the breakthrough, et cetera. And now we have. We know we can get better and better. I just hope we have the time to do that."

So many years preparing and now they worry about rushing their lines. Of all the intrigues and subplots of winter, Ballyboden, the enigmas of the competition, fascinate the most.