One to watch Tommy Walsh: Tom Humphries on the emergence of St Kieran's graduate Tommy Walsh and the best position in which to showcase a prodigious talent

Not long ago St Kieran's College in Kilkenny added another All-Ireland hurling title to their list of achievements. In one match they avenged last year's defeat in a weather-soured game to St Colman's. They shackled the boy wonder Andrew O'Shaughnessy and came home hailed as the greatest St Kieran's team ever.

Within the college, however, there is a reluctance to compare one vintage with another. Every year has its virtues and every hurling summer sends its supplicants for stardom. This year is no exception. People will watch O'Shaughnessy and Tony Óg Regan and John Gardiner and others hoping to spot the next comet.

All the big teams carry in their ranks players who could break out and furnish their mantelpieces with a handful of Young Player of the Year awards at Christmas.

In Kilkenny, because the river is overstocked, it is harder to catch the eye, which makes Tommy Walsh's emergence all the more promising. They've seen boy wonders come and go.

Walsh was a member of the St Kieran's College All-Ireland winning team of 2000 and for some the only surprise when he made his senior Kilkenny debut in the Walsh Cup this year was that it had taken so long. The explanation perhaps lay in his size. Like DJ Carey, another St Kieran's wonderkid before him, Walsh is small enough that you'd worry about him on a senior hurling pitch.

No need. He has the game in his blood and in his rearing. He is a grandson of the great Paddy Grace and part of a wave of players to emerge in Tullaroan over the last half decade or so.

In Kieran's they can remember seeing him in a Féile final six years ago. The star of the day was Shane Hennessy, currently on the county under-21s and a player who will be hustling for a senior place himself soon. Jimmy Coogan's brother Ken was playing too but one player kept catching the eye, the little full back.

"It was Tommy Walsh and it was a trademark Tommy performance. He was there for everything. Tenacious and earnest, just doing everything right," says Billy Bolster of St Kieran's.

Walsh is remembered as one of the most inspirational players to have come through the nation's top hurling academy. Given the company he kept in college and the faces who looked down from old team pictures, that is an accolade.

"There's not much of him there, but his determination, his commitment in training? Awesome," says Bolster. "He'd cut the legs off his best friend in training."

There are stories. Once, to prove a point about fitness, Bolster took the St Kieran's team for an athletics session at the all-weather track in Loughboy. The plan for the days was 8 x 200 sprints with a 35-second interval in between.

The lads were running 28 or 29-second sessions which is a good time for young hurlers. Bolster, a PE teacher and a fit man, would insert himself into some of the faster sprints to extract the most out of them.

"Every time we'd get to the line Tommy Walsh was there. Just doggedness, just this ability to get it out of himself."

Another day, another point to prove. The St Kieran's squad are taken to the old graveyard, Foulkestown cemetary, high above Kilkenny. They have their Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon; this was to be the heartbreak hill for the St Kieran's kids. Bolster set off at a gallop.

"I'm trying to prove a point to them. I have 40 or 50 yards on them at the top of the first hill, then there's a little plateau of 200 metres and then another hill and by the end of the plateau part I can't see any of the lads. On up the hill and 50 yards from the top I look over the shoulder. There's Tommy Walsh and Timmy Murphy who captained the team in 2000. Just the two of them, nobody else in sight."

In Tullaroan Walsh won everything all the way up through the grades including the club's first senior title in nine years. In St Kieran's they perhaps put the finishing touches on him but he always had the reputation for being one of those players who would simply be asked to do a job and would just get it done. Low maintenance.

There is mild surprise among those who know him that he is being used right now in the Kilkenny forwards. He was reared as a defender, possibly as a midfielder. Quiet performances against Wexford and Tipperary recently may cause a rethink.

"His level of first-touch dexterity for the position he's playing in seems wrong," says Bolster. "Yet at another level he is so skilful that he can play anywhere and look good. For me his ability to read the game, his incredible judgment and his pace over 10 yards, I think it makes him a natural back. He silently goes about his work, does the business and he has that bit of divilment."

In St Kieran's these days when they look at Eoin Kelly taking big scores off Kilkenny teams they recognise certain things. Kelly is another St Kieran's old boy, a team-mate of Walsh in 2000. His old mentors note that a lot of Kelly's outfield points are hit with high trajectory and top spin with the player moving the hurley almost over the ball. It means Kelly only needs a yard or two of space.

They watch Kelly help himself and remember the games of backs and forwards when he had the terrier Tommy Walsh stapled to him. Walsh had the fitness over 10 or 15 yards, he had the willingness to learn and he had the endurance.

In St Kieran's another year is coming to an end. The Harty Cup is back in its place. Come September they'll have a new intake out on the back pitch, each one aspiring to be the new DJ, the next Tommy Walsh. And possibly there'll be another All-Ireland senior medal in the pockets of several St Kieran's graduates.

Whatever happens, hurling life and the pursuit of excellence goes on and the quiet example of Tommy Walsh's doggedness will be a greater lesson than whatever highlights' reel he might put together this summer.