Interview with Paudie Butler: Keith Dugganjoins the national hurling co-ordinator on the Loughrea leg of his crusade.

Paudie Butler stands in the doorway peering into the blackest of December nights and heavy, swirling drizzle illuminated by four powerful floodlights. Behind him, around one hundred prospective hurling coaches look dubiously at the miserable evening. The nearby Corrib river flows fast and swollen and downtown Galway is doing brisk Christmas shopping trade.

A six o'clock hurling clinic during a week defined by howling wind and rain should not be an easy sell. But over 150 people showed up at the previous evening's show in Loughrea and there has been a strong response from hurling people in the city also.

Since taking on the national hurling co-ordinator post, Butler has undertaken a crusade with typical vigour and energy and tonight he raises his hurl like a crozier and suggests the crowd brave the wet and gather at the astroturf pitch for the hour of skills demonstration.

"Are we willing?" he demands cheerfully. "What was it Bush wanted - a cohort of the willing?"

Creating a sense of togetherness is central to Butler's aims. For the past two months, he has moved through "the fragmented" hurling communities in mid-Ulster, Donegal, Sligo and the Midlands trying to show the guardians of hurling in those counties they are not just whistling in the dark, or at least not anymore.

For every doom-laden prediction about the bleak future of hurling, Butler bats back an energetic counter-response.

He does not believe that hurling as Ireland's national game is a mere conceit, although the elite counties number less than double figures. He does not consider the game to be in crisis.

And he is convinced a uniform coaching policy can and will create a recognisable national hurling grid more quickly than people believe.

The problem with hurling is easy to see. Those few counties abundantly rich in the game produce players who operate on a level close to genius, light years away from anything that the struggling outposts could ever hope to compete against.

People point at the tight, unbreakable cocoon of hurling culture in Kilkenny, with its rich tradition and robust club life, its excellent underage programme and its graveyards full of All-Ireland hurling winners, and say that such a republic of pure hurling culture is a rarity and an exception and impossible for other counties to aspire to.

Could a prodigious talent like Tommy Walsh have flourished outside the nursery of Tullaroan? Could a county with an impoverished hurling history produce a youngster who, in the right environment, might develop into a top-grade hurler with the omniscient skills of "Cha" Fitzpatrick or Eoin Kelly. Or is it all down to place and tradition and bloodlines?

"It is not bloodlines, no," Butler says. "But what we aren't sure about is how people learn things.

"It is comparable to why so many great soccer players come from Brazil. It would appear that we learn in very different ways. When children are small, it would seem they take things on board in their deep subconscious. So a child in Kilkenny and Cork at a hurling match will learn things that come into play later on.

"The boy in Armagh is watching a different pattern. And regardless of the coaching they both get later on, it seems something has happened. The pace of the match, the content, the excitement, the way the game is spoken of later - all seem to combine so that the community creates the hurler, in the same way as the parish creates the child. Immersion in the community is huge."

Still, his teaching is shaped on the fact that regardless of county and accent, kids are kids. They are pliable, they are natural, they soak up information like sponges.

And if a six-year-old in the Inishowen Peninsula is exposed to the same quality of hurling coaching as a six-year-old in Ballyhale, then at least the Northern boy will have the fundamental skills - if not the natural belonging and expectation and sense of destiny that come with living a few houses up from Henry Shefflin.

What Paudie Butler wants to do is get to the hurling coaches before they can riddle the kids with bad habits. Tonight, he settles for the warmth of an indoor session and runs about 20 young teenagers from the Rahoon club through 90 minutes of hurling fundamentals.

Noticeably, they are wearing the official shirts of football teams like Juventus, Liverpool, Newcastle and even the Netherlands. There is one Kerry football shirt.

They all play, though, and fairly hop to Butler's commands, his voice busy with encouragement and urgency.

YEARS OF COACHING ENABLEhim to produce a fine and enjoyable session despite the tiny hall. It is all fundamental stuff: passing to "the magic circle", that circumference around the player's upper body where it is easiest to receive the pass, roll and lift at speed, give and go, exchanging passes in the "danger zone" of close-quarter range where mistakes are easily made, keeping the hurley raised, giving the ball and going, always moving, always looking.

"Did ye see Gladiator, lads? He keeps his sword raised. Otherwise his head rolls on the ground. Heads roll in Croke Park every Sunday too, boys. You spend 20 years perfecting these skill and then journalists and the public decide your head should roll because you make one mistake."

His approach is not exactly softly-softly but the youngsters are comfortable with him. He encourages competition to a point, challenging the city boys to better the 22 roll-and-lifts achieved in a minute in Loughrea the previous evening.

He wants to see mistakes made because that means the children are not operating in "the comfort zone".

Chastising a kid for dropping a ball is, he believes, the most foolhardy thing a coach can do because it means the player will retreat into that comfort zone where he less likely to stand out and therefore less likely to learn.

Butler wants astroturf pitches in every county - they come at €1 million including lights and hurling walls.

He accepts that the point that in this instant-fix age, hurling is at the distinct disadvantage of needing long hours and years of dedication if it is to be fully mastered.

Again, this is where coaching comes in.

"I have to accept that. A lot of coaches who mean well say that hurling is a simple game. And they are not telling lies. But what they are saying is misleading. What they are saying is: great players play it simply. But that is a long way from saying the game is simple.

"With 150 classified separate skills, not minding game skills and fitness and other factors, it obviously takes time to become an expert at it.

"And we are seeing a lot of young players pulled in all kinds of directions. Keith Higgins of Mayo had to play for 10 teams last year and in the end, the team he built up, he was not able to line out for them. It was a shame because for young lads to see Keith Higgins playing as he can in a Mayo shirt, that is what brings counties on."

At the highest level of the game, he reckons many people are overlooking the fact that another revolution, not as colourful or obvious as that which occurred 10 years ago, is in full swing.

"Take Munster. For the first time in my life, all five counties could win the Munster championship. And they are all strong teams. Hurlers are so athletic now that people have misinterpreted the whole thing.

"In 2006 in Croke Park, on average a player in possession had to have gathered and distributed his ball in 1.9 seconds. That is playing at a new level of intensity and agility and strike rate for scores and for first touch.

"The speed proves the whole point. This has never existed before. That may not be obvious to the casual onlooker. But these are supreme athletes.

"See, what people would really like is more expression of individual skill. When everyone gets up to a similar athleticism, you need to broaden the field or reduce the number of players.

"I know people who will go see a junior match and declare it a great match because there is plenty of scoring and players get time on the ball. In Croke Park, there is no time on the ball. That is not appreciated. And in the All-Ireland final Kilkenny reduced Cork's time on the ball to an absolute minimum.

"People should be in awe of what they are doing.

"And in the other sense, Waterford are as fine a team as ever played hurling. They played in two of the best matches we have seen - the Munster final and semi-final against Cork - and they play a game which is absolutely skills-based, which is great to see. But the speed at which the top counties are playing now is unprecedented."

And that makes them harder to catch. The case of Antrim, whose hurling tradition is a marvel, regularly illustrates just how great is the gulf between the strongest counties and those where the game survives in pockets.

Antrim hurling promises so much and yet that big summer victory constantly eludes them.

"Yeah, they do have to cross the line. They are plenty good. But because Antrim is kind of an island, a game has evolved there which is fantastically attractive, and played among themselves, it is thrilling. Thrilling. It looks peerless. But because it is an island in regard to hurling, they miss out on tiny, defensive skills.

"They might be playing at 2.5 pace - which is very good. But then they come to Dublin and the pace is 1.9 seconds. And you get robbed in possession and next thing it is a goal and the heart goes out of you. And that is where the frailty is in Antrim. It is that fine.

"And when the goal is hit against the weaker counties, it has more significance.

"Kilkenny and Cork leak goals but they are rarely capital goals. When I was with Laois, a goal scored against us meant an immediate decrease in effort of about 30 per cent. The goal kills weaker counties."

BUTLER BEGAN HIS JOBas national hurling director on September 1st. Since then, he has visited 27 counties, a staggering burst of productivity.

His night in the Inishowen Peninsula, where his presence was welcomed and his knowledge absorbed with a warmth and gratitude that humbled him, remains a shining memory and convinced him the GAA was on the right track.

"Hurling is our inheritance," he says simply.

"Every area was a hurling area once, as the forests were cleared, you could say. Go back the centuries and hurling was the only game we played. We can be confident this game is 4,000 years old.

"You talk about the GAA and you are talking about 120 years. Go back to the 18th century and hurling was a professional game, supported by the landlords. And it is an extraordinary twist of fate that the landlords, such a hated class in Irish history, were the ones that almost saved hurling, particularly in the areas of good land."

Butler wants hurling to flourish everywhere again, from the stony grey soil of Kavanagh country to the vast estates in the neon suburbs to which the GAA will have to turn for the next generations of stars.

He believes Dublin hurling will reconnect with its glorious past before too many more decades pass and is passionate in his belief that good communication is the only thing standing between young kids in "football" counties who believed that hurling was something that happened elsewhere.

"The great strength and weakness of the GAA is that anyone can come in and coach kids. The important thing is that they don't apply adult prerogatives and needs onto those kids. If we present hurling to kids as attractive and encourage them to feel that it is a game they can play and enjoy, they will stay with it for life."

After Galway city, Butler was motoring toward Wexford, where the alarm sirens have been sounding in recent years. County number twenty-eight. Hurling away.