Wicklow v Louth:Mick O'Dwyer faces perhaps his greatest challenge as he takes his Wicklow side to Croke Park, writes Ian O'Riordan

In the stillness of Aughrim on a wet Friday evening the rasping voice of Mick O'Dwyer fills the GAA pitch in surround-sound, echoing into the village and possibly even the mountains that encircle this quaint part of Wicklow.

Standing all around him are the Wicklow senior footballers. They hardly dare to breathe as he completes an eight-minute monologue and he repeatedly emphasises the word "championship".

As he reaches the end O'Dwyer puts a fist to his chest and lets his fingers splay out across his heart, as if to show what a simple, physical thing it is, yet what drive and passion it can generate. "Let's goooo-oah!" he yells, and suddenly the fist is raised above his head.

The players charge into the drizzling rain as if it were their last training session ever, and for the next 60 minutes there isn't a moment's hesitation. They warm up with some wind sprints and dynamic stretches, they race flat out around flagpoles, they play a practice match with energy and abandon. It's all run with military efficiency.

Watching from the sidelines, you find the enthusiasm infectious. Most things money can buy. When it comes to true passion and obsession in a football manager, the 70-year-old O'Dwyer is still priceless.

About an hour earlier O'Dwyer had pulled into Lawless's Hotel at the Aughrim river bridge driving a boat-sized BMW - brand new, top of the range. The irony of the hotel name probably didn't dawn on him, of how Gaelic football in Wicklow once had a lawless reputation. Yet when he agreed to take the manager's job last October that was the least of Wicklow's concerns.

Besides Fermanagh they remain the only county yet to win a provincial football title. Tomorrow they're chasing their first ever championship win in Croke Park, a first championship win in Leinster in seven years, and only a fourth ever championship win over Louth. If they lose they won't get a second chance, and instead are diverted straight into the Tommy Murphy Cup.Which revisits the original question of how O'Dwyer ended up here in the first place.

"We had a three-man committee set up to seek a high-profile manager," explains the then county chairman, Michael O'Hagan. "Myself, Jimmy Dunne, and Michael Murphy. And Mick O'Dwyer was the first name all three of us considered.

"Contact was made through Billy Timmins, the Wicklow Fine Gael TD, and a meeting was set up. He came back for a second meeting and everything fell into place after that. And he certainly was very enthusiastic from the start, and actually saw it as a great challenge for him to come to a county like Wicklow - especially when we were at such a low ebb at the time. He seemed to relish that challenge, and we all know that Mick O'Dwyer loves a challenge."

O'Hagan, naturally, skips over the details, because clearly O'Dwyer wasn't about to treat the 450-mile round trip from his home in Waterville as some charitable cause. It was hardly a coincidence then that Wicklow had just signed a three-year sponsorship deal with Ballymore Properties, owned by the Roscommon businessman Seán Mulryan. A resident of Ballymore-Eustace on the Wicklow-Kildare border, Mulryan had sons involved with Wicklow juvenile teams and the Hollywood club, and he enthusiastically broached the benefits of attracting a manager of O'Dwyer's status.

"In fairness Seán Mulryan has never shied away from sponsoring teams in Wicklow. He had already sponsored various minor and under-21 teams in the past, and still has a son playing for Hollywood. But of course the sponsorship played a big part in allowing us to seek out a high-profile manager.

"Micko has already brought a whole new way of thinking within the county. There have been some very heavy demands put on him by the various clubs since he's come up here, and yet he's always come up trumps, especially as regards juvenile functions."

Team administrator Martin Coleman has observed every training session since O'Dwyer took over, and while he is conscious of sounding like a broken record when talking about the new levels of commitment O'Dwyer has brought into the county team, that's the reality.

"The commitment from the players has been huge," says Coleman. "You know we had 121 showing up for the first few sessions. But on average Micko has been up three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and has also been doing a Sunday since the end of the league. It is a very, very long journey for him, but I just know he loves driving. He says he does all his thinking when he's driving."

All this brings big pressure on O'Dwyer at Croke Park tomorrow afternoon, and it's a game they'll do very well to win. Louth are probably further down their road of rejuvenation, and Wicklow can only hope they've gained fast enough. Yet O'Dwyer has done his all to get them mentally and physically right for the challenge. He's given every player in the county the chance, and managed to call upon Carlow's former midfield star Thomas Walsh in the process.

As darkness sets in around Aughrim and O'Dwyer finishes up the training session, he seems, once again, perfectly at home. It's close to 10 before he starts his long journey back to Kerry - plenty of time to think long and hard about his next 70 minutes of championship football. Win or lose you can be sure it won't be his last.

If there was such thing as a true test of Mick O'Dwyer's influence on a team then it takes place in Croke Park tomorrow. When he took over Wicklow last October the first question people asked was whether he was mad or just pretending to be. Wicklow were arguably the worst football team in the country, with their prospects for success lying somewhere between hopeless and non-existent.

The hype surrounding Wicklow's O'Byrne Cup campaign was typical of O'Dwyer's enduring value and respect within the game, and yet when it came to grinding out results in the league things didn't go exactly to plan.

Their fifth place finish in Division Two B, consigning them to Division Four next year, meant their championship ambitions could start and finish here. Under the new format division-four teams don't get a second chance if beaten, unless they make the provincial finals, and go into the Tommy Murphy Cup instead.

Yet Wicklow aren't being sidetracked by that prospect, and in fact the focus all season has been on this Sunday. If anyone can get the best out of Wicklow then O'Dwyer can.

There are three debutants in goalkeeper Billy Norman, defender Alan Byrne and forward JP Dalton, but much attention will be on the former Carlow midfielder Thomas Walsh, who is well settled in his adopted county. The experienced Brendan Ó hAnnaidh makes his first start in two years.

The big problem for Wicklow is that Louth are probably two or three years further down the development road, with manager Eamonn McEneaney equally deft at getting the best from his players. They should have beaten Tyrone last summer. The have the benefit of division one football in their legs and some real class forwards in the likes of Aaron Hoey and Darren Clarke.

WICKLOW: B Norman; C Hyland, D Power, A Byrne; L Glynn, D Ó hAnnaidh, B Ó hAnnaidh; J Stafford, T Walsh; T Hannon, P Dalton, JP Dalton; T Gill, D Jackman, P Earls.

LOUTH: S Reynolds; D Brennan, C Goss, A Page; R Finnegan, P McGinnity, J Carr; P Keenan, R Carroll; C Grimes, M Brennan, J O'Brien; A Hoey, S Lennon, D Clarke.