All-Ireland club championship finals: Ian O'Riordan finds Newtown captain John McCarthy greatly relishing the novel taste of success.

The story of Newtownshandrum and their rise to an All-Ireland final has now spread far. A small Cork parish beating all the big names in club hurling with a team that mostly grew up together is already the stuff of legend. Win or lose in Croke Park tomorrow, they will never forget this season.

But there are details of the story that also make for an exceptional read. Like that of team captain John McCarthy, aged 32 and with a talent for the game that is only now getting noticed. Of the whole team, he is the one who could least take success for granted, because he so rarely tasted it.

McCarthy hasn't got much to look back on, not like the eight players on the team who first came together in primary school 20 years ago and have known little other than winning.

Until recent years McCarthy probably felt he was born either too early or too late. He describes his early hurling years simply as "miserable". Newtown was his pride and joy but in truth the club promised so little. Croke Park on St Patrick's Day wouldn't even make his dreams.

"I won absolutely nothing underage," he says. "I went to the CBS Charleville and won nothing there. The club lost the junior championship in Cork in 1992; I was the youngest man on the team, and you'd say there was nothing coming through.

"And so Cork senior championships are still a novel experience for us. So I suppose a lot of us are looking on this as a sort of happy-go-lucky adventure.

"And I don't think the enormousness of the situation has hit us. And probably won't for a long time. There's a carnival atmosphere in the parish and that's totally understandable."

McCarthy was previously club captain in 1996, but the feeling he's got this year comfortably surpasses that experience.

"People say it's a great honour leading your team into Croke Park on an All-Ireland day, and even more so if you win it, but for me the real honour lay 14 months ago when my fellow players chose me as captain. I mean I consider myself so privileged and fortunate to get the captaincy this year with all the great players on this team."

Yet the farmer and part-time accountant wasn't chosen on experience alone. His performances at corner back have been exemplary, and though he missed a couple of the earlier rounds of the Munster championship with injury, his absence provided added motivation.

"There's always tension on the field but compared to sitting on the bench it's grand. That's so much worse. You don't know whether you are going to partake or not, so you can't relax at all being conscious of the fact you might be coming on. So you really are caught between two stools. But in the last few minutes of the Munster final against Patrickswell we were up nine points, so they just threw me on for the sake of being captain. And that was nice. And thankfully the fitness is fine now. You still get a little twinge in the ankle during the course of the game but it's fine."

Beating O'Loughlin Gaels after a replay set up their All-Ireland date against Dunloy, but for now McCarthy holds the Cork county final win over Blackrock as the sweetest moment. The city boys were going for a third title in succession, but Newtown had something to prove.

"When we won our first senior in 2000, even though we knew we weren't really the best side in Cork, I felt that was it, our Everest was conquered. But when we lost to them last year we felt we had to make up for it. So up to next Wednesday, beating Blackrock is still my highlight of the year. If we'd lost there again people would say 2000 was just a flash in the pan."

Surprisingly, McCarthy admits the club had actually been holding back during the Cork campaign, priming themselves to peak against Blackrock - and he has an example to prove it: "Throughout the Cork campaign Ben O'Connor was playing at corner forward, partly because the management didn't want us to peak until the county final. Ben then went to centre forward for that game, and it basically revolutionised the team. I think we're a lot better now."

Mention of O'Connor starts the tale of the club's great rise: "When those players came along we felt an intermediate title was definitely on but that we'd still be blown out of it in the senior ranks. Then they won the under-21 title in the county in 1998 with a bunch of 19-year-olds. And by the time they'd won three in a row we'd started in senior.

"And even when they were very young you'd pick out Ben and Jerry O'Connor. But everyone else you'd never say would make senior. So for all of them to get this far is farcical.

"But definitely Ben you'd have always picked out as a special talent. The stuff he was doing at that age most adults, including myself, couldn't do still.

"And these guys are born fighters as well. People see the fancy stickwork with Ben, but he gets this stare in his eyes too, and you know then he's up for it."

So to Croke Park, and another chapter in the Newtown story McCarthy can barely believe.

"We went up to there last Saturday for a run-out. And it's like jumping into a cauldron. Straight away I said to myself this has gone beyond a joke. Even when you strike the ball the echo was like a shotgun. Ah yeah, they say it will suit a young team like us. But there are old codgers in there as well like myself. We'd like to play in a matchbox if possible."