ON Thursday night a new set of floodlights invaded the darkness over Newtownshandrum. Locals, celebrating progress, basked in the glow. Better than Pairc Uí Rinn, they decided; bigger, brighter, smarter. Word was that if you tossed a coin onto the field, finding it would be prove no chore.

Light beamed down on their sand-based pitch, tailored to the team's trademark brand of hurling, one they know will hold true even in the harshest weather conditions. There are murmurings of a stand one day and the alluring vista of inter-county matches.

They feel entitled to such gains, regarding their team as worthy of any indulgence. Hurling has engaged them for decades, embedded in their daily routines, and now they have a bunch of players granting full licence to their fanaticism.

This is hardcore hurling territory and has been for some time. Back in the 1990s a club AGM voted to abolish Gaelic football because, to put it diplomatically, they felt there wasn't enough room for two games in a small place like theirs.

Bernie O'Connor, synonymous with the club's rise, says it was a pragmatic decision, one which they haven't regretted. They reached minor finals in football, but hardly blinked. Once a senior hurling title focused their energies, everything else became obsolete.

They spent long enough dreaming. In the 1950s the club had a spell in the Cork senior hurling championship, providing easy fodder for giants like Glen Rovers who trampled them without mercy. The memories of those hidings left lasting scars. "We made lots of mistakes," says Mike Morrissey, the club's PRO.

In 1976, after winning the county intermediate championship, the club took a decision not to go senior. "It was a huge error," admits Morrissey. "Older people remembered the terrible hammerings we got in the 1950s and felt the same thing would happen."

It's easier to reflect on those failings now, with the team thriving and on the brink of reaching an All-Ireland club final. After their close rivals Ballyhea won the junior title in 1976, the two teams were drawn to play each other in the opening round of the intermediate championship a year later. They don't need reminding.

Moving to senior would have been warranted if only to avoid their defeat to Ballyhea. The match still brings a chill. Two points up nearing the end, the ball dropped between a pair of Newtown backs. They collided and in stepped a corner forward named Johnny Ryan to claim the match-winning goal.

A crowd of around 7,000 was in Charleville to witness Newtown's trauma, deepened by further defeats to the same opposition in the following few years. "It was a killer," says Morrissey, present at the '77 surrender.

They won back the intermediate title in 1981, but the team was ageing and managed just one victory in four stabs at the senior championship in the years that followed. A slide back down to junior preceded the next rise and in 1996 they returned to senior ranks, encouraged by the revolution taking place at underage.

There are people to be thanked, but one who is no longer involved in managing the team looms large: Bernie O'Connor. He arrived in the 1980s from one disadvantaged part of rural Cork to settle in another. His imprint is all over the team.

His native place is Meelin, around 20 miles away, and they had little to shout about when he hurled, a junior team from the weakest hurling division in Cork, Duhallow. But he took an early shine to adversity. He was on Meelin's junior team at 14, sufficient to gain him the notice of Cork's minor selectors in 1967.

He was the first from Duhallow to earn the distinction at a time when Cork didn't feel overly pressed about looking far beyond the city for hurlers. The county snapped up seven Munster minor titles in a row and in 1967 he brought home an All-Ireland medal.

To get to training he thumbed from Meelin to the city, nearly 50 miles, and hitched home late at night. Later he hurled for the county U21s and had a few league outings at senior. But hurling junior for Meelin had its limitations.

"I used to play full-back or full-forward. I'd go up for a trial today and they'd put me full-back and you'd meet the likes of Ray Cummins. They'd put you full-forward the second day and you'd meet the likes of Martin Doherty. So, you know, you didn't get the chance of impressing as such.

"Anyway, coming from where I came from you'd be in awe of them, saying: 'Am I on the same field as Ray Cummins?' Going in you would feel: 'I haven't a hope.' Going back then the country boys didn't see themselves in the same light as the city hurlers, whereas now it's changed, for the better."

'If you can name any other team game in the world that the main emphasis is not on passing the ball then I'll change my style'

He glories in the change and has lived his hurling life as an outsider, an open rebuke to the establishment. In 1986 he moved to Newtown, marrying and setting up family, and began hurling for them. He didn't stop until he was 48. "Dad's Army," he says jokingly.

The next generation was his main passion. He took over the U12s when his twin sons Ben and Jerry were finishing national school and the majority of the side remain in place today. They swept the boards moving up the ranks, winning three county U21 titles at the end of the last decade, and made history by winning the Cork senior championship in 2000.

Whatever support systems he lacked as a player were not going to be denied his boys. His methods were modern and controversial, hard fitness regimes and a method of hurling that placed a high premium on possession. They know no other way of playing.

When O'Connor stepped down after Imokilly beat them in the 2001 county semi-final, former Limerick manager Tom Ryan arrived and proceeded to impose direct strategies, along more conventional lines. The players hurled away, but felt the strain and lost the county final to Blackrock.

Ryan left after one year, realising it was their way or the highway. O'Connor is unrepentant. "If you can name any team game in the world that the main emphasis is not on passing the ball then I'll change my style," he challenges.

"Why should hurling be so much different than any other game? You have good midfielders not playing well simply because the ball is being flaked up over their heads the whole time. They're inside in the middle like zombies running here and there, the ball flying over them. Now my argument is: put them on the ball.

"I would say to all half-backs, if there's a midfielder loose tap it out to him; he's the link between backs and forwards, you've your job done. That's how it should be. I'm sick of saying this: it takes brain to play short ball, brawn to play long ball."

NEWTOWN are so accustomed to the style that it would probably spell disaster were they to tamper. And why should they? It's been getting them massive results. But even though it may suit a light, mobile team like theirs, O'Connor can't see why all teams don't favour the same approach.

"I think it's the way to hurl. You see lads belting balls 60 feet in the air into small forwards. Then you hear fellas saying, 'Ah, the forwards were hopeless.' Of course they were when the ball is coming down from the clouds. I would love to see an inter-county team do it. I think it would be a fantastic game to watch.

"I think it's total hurling, not hit and hope. You're hitting the ball with a purpose, you think when you get the ball. Most hurling is played off-the-cuff; get it and flake it. I don't think that is the right type of hurling."

If he had the Cork job that's the way he'd have them playing. But there seems slim enough prospect of that. Neither the style he champions nor his outspoken nature appeals to the men who appoint Cork managers. They're firmly of the old school. "I've been told I'm not playing traditional Cork hurling," he says.

He has listened to match broadcasters cast reserved judgement on their play. "They say, 'Oh this is beautiful from Newtown,' and then it goes wrong, (and they say) 'but this is what I mean, when they overdo it can go so wrong.'" He mimics their pained expressions.

"But no matter what kind of hurling you do, it can go wrong like. If you're a wing back and drive it 80 yards up in the sky and the other wing back gets it, 'tis gone wrong as well. Certainly, things will go wrong and mistakes will be made, we're human, but you aim to limit the amount of mistakes.

"There's a very demanding physical side to it, you have to be able to run for long periods of time at pace. It's not a case of just jogging around the field. Before I came here at all I was coaching in Meelin and we played the same style.

"We think in Cork we can find a team to win an All-Ireland whenever we like, but we're wrong. They were so long on top, winning All-Irelands at every level, but it's not happening now. I think standards in Cork are at an all-time low.

"I was at the two Cork semi-finals last year, Newtown and Sarsfields, Blackrock and Cloyne. There were 80 players on view. I picked six out of 80 that I thought were good enough to play senior hurling for Cork. Now if you go back to the likes of Gerald McCarthy, Charlie McCarthy and these fellas, if you saw the Barrs and the Glen playing that time, they had most of the Cork team, proving the point that Cork have to go out around the county to find their players. Whereas that time they were all above in the city."

I'm sick of saying this: it takes brain to play short ball, brawn to play long ball'

When a vacancy arose for the Cork hurling manager's post he wasn't contacted. It didn't surprise him. He would like to do it some day, but it's not keeping him awake at night all the same. He has a family of 10 and the hurley-making business keeps him occupied.

The sticks have been in hot demand with orders in from places like Sligo, Antrim and Donegal, and half the Cork hurling panel regard his product as their preferred choice. Recently he got involved with the Kileedy club in Limerick, which narrowly escaped relegation to intermediate grade last year.

"I didn't have any intention of coming back at it, but the man that came to me was very persuasive. He loves the club and said if they went down it would be the end of them. Being a soft touch, I felt for the fella that was struggling."

He had 15 training sessions complete when we spoke and it seems fair to say the Kileedy hurlers have had stiff limbs in recent weeks. There are tales of 12-lap warm-ups to get them in the groove. When the hurling starts he will be adopting the Newtown model.

The precision planning is a reaction to his own playing days when they did a lot less and got the expected results. "I suppose one thing it taught me is that once you got a proper chance you make sure that anyone you're involved with makes the effort and sacrifice. I think when you're playing lower divisions you probably don't go that step farther. The sacrifice has to be made, and that stuck in my mind."

It is 51 miles to Pairc Uí Chaoimh from Newtown, but the powerbase has shifted. In last year's county final they beat Blackrock, with all the connotations of grandeur, and the underage teams under Liam Ryan are said to be fitting successors whenever the current crop of senior players vacate the throne.

"There was a saying in Cork one time," says O'Connor, "that once you went outside Blackpool there wasn't a hurler in the county. They're coming out for them now."

Nine of the eleven boys, including the O'Connor twins, who started school the same day are still hurling for Newtown. "I think they're pure honest-to-God hurlers and anyone, once they can hurl and once they can run, can be that," says Bernie.

They utilise the 15 players and every inch of ground available and when the system breaks down they just keep at it until they recover their momentum. In the 2000 county final win over Erin's Own, the match hung in the balance to the end, but they never abandoned their chosen style of play.

O'Connor admits it isn't unbeatable and that there are ways of counteracting the gameplan.

But it depends on fast man-marking, tireless defensive work and compels teams to change their own way of hurling. It is too radical a step for most of them.

The O'Connor hurley-making factory ground to a halt on Wednesday for a few hours when work on the new floodlights robbed the town of power. Nobody would be heard complaining. It would come back.

Hurling times like they're having now may never be repeated.

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