As the countdown to the 2007 Guinness All Ireland senior final between Limerick and Kilkenny picks up, life is good for JJ Delaney just now, notes An Fear Rua...

And it would become even better if he could add yet another All Ireland senior hurling medal to the pair he already has. Plus the five Leinster championship medals and the four he got for being on winning teams in the National Hurling League.

JJ works now as a sales representative with Tegral, the slate manufacturing crowd below in Athy in county Kildare. They’re a very sports oriented company. They sponsor Kildare and they number the Lily Whites’ football star, Anthony Rainbow, among their workforce. Tegral are very understanding when it comes to the hurling. JJ is a salesperson around the counties of Kilkenny, Carlow and Wexford. It’s grand. An hour is the farthest away he ha to be from work so he’s been home at nearly half past six every night for training.

Kilkenny’s ‘double whammy’ of championship defeats over Wexford doesn’t seem to be interfering too much with his chances of closing sales in the Model County. After all, the Wexford people enjoy the game of hurling as a spectacle. Many of the Wexford lads say that when their own county is knocked out of the championship they’d shout for the Leinster lads, if t’was Offaly or even Kilkenny. A rueful smile plays around JJ’s mouth: ‘They’re good oul crack down in Wexford.’

He admits that losing the National Hurling League final to Waterford, last May, in Thurles, was a bit of a set back as well as a kick in the arse for himself and his colleagues. He recalls well how it happened: ‘Maybe in the last twenty minutes we were out of the game – the most important, most vital part of it. You can’t argue with it. If you look back at the match, they were the better team in the last twenty minutes so you have to hold your hands up and say ‘we were bet fair and square like’’..

Not surprisingly, as a Kilkenny man JJ doesn’t sign up to the view that Munster hurling is in some way superior to the Leinster variety, despite the magnificent showcase displays by Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Tipperary. He responds: ‘There are very good teams in Munster but - on their day off - Dublin or Wexford could beat any of them as well. Offaly proved that in the league by beating Waterford.’

With the return of Noel Hickey to the Kilkenny back line for the All Ireland it looks like JJ will be back in his favourite half back position: ‘You’d prefer to be out in the half back line because you’re in the game a bit more. You’re under the puckouts and you can get involved and hurl a bit more. In the corner, you’re concentrating on your own man and you have to do your job for the team. Your job is to stop him from scoring. It’s as simple as that.’

No one in the Kilkenny camp takes anything for granted. JJ says: ‘We have thirty lads in there at the moment and there are only fifteen places. Training is hot and heavy in recent weeks. First thing first is to get on the team and see how it goes after that’.

Well, he’s on the 2007 team but an injury a year ago could have been enough to see him off. He injured his cruciate ligament while training with the county panel and missed last year’s All Ireland as a result. ‘Lucky’ is the word he uses to describe what happened: ‘Only a quarter of the cruciate ligament was gone at the time. Once it is more than 60% there, you can work away on it. If it were completely gone, there’d be no guarantees of being able to play. I was lucky and unlucky in the way it happened. It happened and you can’t dwell on these things. It’s in the past now and it’s by me.

JJ’s cruciate injury is in the past. What’s in his immediate future, however, is that All Ireland showdown with the enigmatic hurlers from the banks of the Feale and the Shannon.

He’ll be hoping he stays lucky.

JJ Delaney: ‘They’re good oul crack down in Wexford.