So this is what it feels like. Tom Hickey stands leaning on his hurley on a cooling evening in Nowlan Park, talking up the game while gazing steadfastly at the clear space beyond the huddle of listeners. Doing his duty, being the captain.

Maybe 300 local folk watch from the stands, while on the pitch youngsters divide their time between chasing signatures and impressing team manager Kevin Fennelly with their fielding. Although it is early, a trace of silver moon banishes the last of summer, and the players talk on through light shivering.

The charismatic names are thin on the ground tonight, although DJ Carey is holding court on the stand side of the ground, weaving tales with such ease that it comes as a surprise that no one that has thought to stoke up a camp-fire.

But Hickey, at 22, is the leader, handed the captaincy after his parish, Dunamaggin, won the Kilkenny senior championship last year. He would, you sense, have rather eased into the team in quieter circumstances, but there is no escaping tradition.

"To be honest, I'm not really intimidated by the captaincy thing. Had Gowran won the county final, DJ or Charlie Carter could well be captain, so it's just a chance thing," he says.

But he acknowledges that it means everything around the home place, that this is a year Dunamaggin won't dismiss lightly. Tomorrow week, the Hickey household will purge itself of sanity for a short while.

"Well, I have two brothers playing in the minor final, so I'm sure it'll seem like a long night before we go. We'd usually go off and get Mass before the game and by the time I get back, the brothers would have gone on with the minor team. But I'll have sisters and my mother and a whole lot going to the game, so I'm sure it'll be pretty hectic."

But hectic he can deal with. His hurling, his team's hurling has taken on a formidable momentum since that day against Dublin when they turned up at Parnell Park to be laid to rest and sacked the capital in 20 minutes. Next thing, Hickey was captain of the Leinster champions.

He only came into the team half way through Kilkenny's forgettable National League campaign, and managed to convince Kevin Fennelly of his credentials at challenge matches shortly before the championship began. He scarcely had a second to consider his role as captain when he found himself in front of the microphone at Croke Park. Surely time to acquire a condensed volume of the great modern speeches? "Ah, I don't really go in for that. In the dressingrooms you have lads like Willie O'Connor and Pat (O'Neill) who have been there for a long time and they are natural leaders, really, they have so much experience."

When he speaks of those two stalwarts, he all but hushes his voice in reverence. "I suppose Willie was a player I looked up to as a minor, still is. And Pat is one of the best in the game, he must have the best pair of wrists going. He seems to just flick the ball about 70 yards. But what strikes me most about them is their hunger. We have plenty of young lads on the team now, but none could surpass those two in terms of hunger."

Chances are that Hickey, on the cusp of 23, might encounter another wizened old sage tomorrow week, if Joe Dooley lines out in the expected position. The slim, mild-mannered sorcerer has never looked so dangerous. "Well, I was at the match against Clare (in Thurles) and it was kinda hard to avoid him. Joe seems to be back to his best and I'm sure at 35 he'll be viewing this as one of his last chances to win an All-Ireland. He will give it his all.

"We marked each other for about five minutes in the Leinster final and I don't think a ball came in. If it stays that way next Sunday, I'll be happy. But the way hurling is now, you're never certain of who you'll be marking, so it would be foolish to concentrate on just one man."

Hickey, like the rest of the Kilkenny team, has had little choice but to sit back in recent weeks and twiddle his thumbs as Offaly took lead role in the most astonishing hurling story of the decade. Somewhere along the way, they began to hurl with real heart again. "Offaly, like, when they get it together they have such unbelievable hurlers," offers Hickey, shaking his head as though confounded by them.

"Over their three games against Clare, I think they were the better side in the first and last game. They really went at it, flicked on very well, typical Offaly hurling. Johnny Pilkington's first-half point in the third game was as good as I have seen."

Not that he is promising fireworks tomorrow week. "I'm not sure it will be a great game in that both defences have been on top all year. It should be a great occasion, though, and if we can win by just one point, it will have been an excellent game as far as I'm concerned."

And should they triumph, and Tom Hickey finds himself wading through adoring hands towards the McCarthy Cup, only then will he permit himself to consider the details of a speech. Hell, if a Dunamaggin man captains Kilkenny to an All-Ireland, what could be left to say?