AFTER the All Ireland senior medal, after the All Ireland under-21 medal, after the All Star, after the Young Hurler of the Year award, after the county senior medal, after the county under-21 medal, after the Kilkenny southern under-21 medal, after the Leinster club medal, after the Kilkenny Club Hurler of the Year award, after the National League medal, after the Walsh Cup medal - after all of the above, Cha Fitzpatrick finally returned to terra firma last Thursday week in a mucky field on the northside of Dublin. About time for him.

St Patrick's of Drumcondra hosting DIT in the Fitzgibbon Cup quarter-final.

A sod so soft they had to bring the sidelines in five yards and thereby render a small pitch smaller still, much to the angst of the home team, simultaneously blessed and burdened as they were with a raft of light, ballplaying types.

Come the final whistle there was a point in it in favour of the visitors, leaving St Pat's to look back ruefully at the brace of 20-metre frees they'd squandered and the Richie Hogan 'point' that had sneaked inside the far upright but was waved wide. A match St Pat's could have drawn rather than could have won?

Probably. A match in which Fitzpatrick did okay but could have done better? Yes. A match which introduced him to a long-forgotten sensation?

Absolutely. The sensation of finishing on the losing side.

The last time he lost a game with either club or county was early last summer rather than back in the Pleistocene era, but from this eminence both seem equally distant.

The last time he won a game with Ballyhale Shamrocks, of course, was last month, in the All Ireland club semi-final to end all club semi-finals. By his own admission he might have fared better there too, although he had a passable excuse in the form of a dose of the flu. Duly enervated, Fitzpatrick played in fits and starts, beginning briskly but disappearing for periods. As a result, the Shamrocks selectors were forced to switch him in full-forward during the second half. Seven minutes from time, with the Leinster champions trailing by five points, an Eoin Reid delivery found Henry Shefflin charging forward on the lefthand side of goal. Loitering on the edge of the square with malice aforethought was Fitzpatrick. Nobody in Toomevara will require reminding of what happened next. Here's Fitzpatrick's take.

"We'd been completely out of our depth in the first half.

Toomevara took us on and tore us apart. But you have to be positive. When Henry came onto that ball I shouted at him. He didn't even look but he knew where I was and he pulled it back for me. If I'd pulled first time I might have missed, so I stopped it, then pulled on it, and luckily nobody hooked me." The sliotar crossed the line, the match somersaulted and Fitzpatrick finished the afternoon with 1-4 beside his name. These flu victims, eh?

Joe Dunphy wouldn't have expected much less, mind. In his 40 years teaching in Ballyhale, Dunphy coached and cajoled and encouraged many a talented young hurler, among them Shefflin and a squad of young Fennellys. But never - never - did he have anything to do with one equipped with the pure and simple skill of Cha Fitzpatrick. Even if they had a struggle to roll the sleeves of his jersey up over his wrists during his first year on the team, so small was he.

"Great wrists, eye, sidestep, guts and a belt on a ball, " says Dunphy. "Above all, a good head. Now Henry has done everything since, and Cha has still to do what Henry has done at adult level. But as a young lad, he was fantastic."

There was the time Ballyhale faced Galmoy in a county final in Nowlan Park, trailed by 15 points early in the second half but ended up winning by 11. There was the time they faced the alwaysformidable Kilmanagh in a replay in Danesfort and were under pressure with the scores level entering injury time when Fitzpatrick, back helping his defenders, blocked a shot, put the sliotar on his hurley, soloed forward, Pat Delaney'd it off the ground back into his hand, ran on and waited till he was within range of the enemy posts before pulling the trigger. Ballyhale won by his point and went on to win the county final. It was nothing less than the destiny of that gifted group to take supreme honours at F�ile na nGael in 1998 and they did, beating Toomevara by 1-10 to 1-2 in the final in Wexford. Take a wild guess who was named the Player of the Tournament.

The following season Fitzpatrick won the county skills competition, was driven to Wexford by his late mother Bridget for the F�ile equivalent and came home with the Christy Ring Trophy. Not only had he not practised hard beforehand, it transpires, he hadn't practised at all; he was so unprepared, indeed, he travelled without a black and amber jersey. Fortunately some kind soul was there from Shelmaliers, who wear the same colours, and fetched a jersey from in his car. "Ah, everything went right on the day for me. Luck."

Right.

As a recitation of Fitzpatrick's achievements - captaining the best St Kieran's team in a generation to All Ireland colleges' success, hitting two goals in his first All Ireland minor final, hitting one in his second and setting up the winning point for Richie Power in injury time, captaining Kilkenny to the 2004 under-21 title despite breaking his collarbone in the final - may only serve to bore the reader, balance demands that it be pointed out he appeared in the 2004 All Ireland senior final in his first year out of minor and was substituted during the second half. He lined out, it may be remembered, at cornerforward, a position that for all Fitzpatrick's skills was not bespoke-tailored for a young man who possessed neither the heft to barrel through defenders nor the pace to outrun them. In a eureka moment one night last summer, the Kilkenny under-21 selectors tried him at midfield during a practice match against the seniors. Fitzpatrick proceeded to knock over points from all angles.

If Fitzpatrick's year turned into the sun's rays that evening, so too did his county's. They now had a metronome marking the beat for them in the middle of the field, prompting and probing and directing. Get ball, look up, transfer ball to colleague:

simple. Search no further for the ultimate emblem of Kilkenny's conversion from the clatter of the broadsword to the more cerebral joys of the scalpel. While Shefflin would be garlanded with the Hurler of the Year award, Kilkenny didn't have a better performer in the All Ireland series than his clubmate. And whereas sometimes the Young Hurler of the Year trophy is won by default, in 2006 it wasn't.

Fitzpatrick first, the rest nowhere: no contest.

Much of his recent fortune he chalks down to the experience gained in 2004. "It's a big enough step up from under-21 to senior, so going from minor to senior was a huge step. I know we lost the All Ireland final but I'd never say that the year was a disappointment, because I learned so much. Playing in front of 80,000 people in the final, for instance. Last year I was used to it. You think, hey, there's an All Ireland to be won here. You know that that's what it's about. The match rather than the occasion." He began 3 September 2006 by eating a big breakfast, then paying a visit to his mother's grave to say a quiet prayer. The spirit of his most fervent supporter would be with him right through one of the greatest days of his life.

After a couple of years doing chemical engineering in UCC, he's currently enjoying life as a trainee teacher in St Pat's and, as a sometime DJ, having fun choosing the matchday music for the Shamrocks bus;

Starship's 'We Built This City' has become their theme song.

Knee-deep in the hoopla indeed. Press him on whether he worries about this continuing gilded unreality of his abruptly ending and he immediately cites the dangers of complacency.

"Things have been so good for me this past year, but if you get caught up in yourself or start taking things for granted, you're finished. I know I have to keep my two feet on the ground. Keep things simple. Work hard. The bread-and-butter stuff. The hardest year to win an All Ireland is the year after you've won it.

"And with Shamrocks, the chances are that this will be my only time to appear in an All Ireland club final. You have to grab these chances. But you can't go by the bookies' odds. With 20 minutes to go in the Galway county final, Loughrea were something like eight points down, yet they came back to win. You never write off an underdog.

Loughrea are in a perfect position for next Saturday. I'd love to be in their shoes."

Anyone he wants to mention before we go? Fitzpatrick nods and nominates Joe Dunphy. Change the name and the parish and it could be a tribute from a grateful prot�g� to any one of hundreds of GAA-loving NTs across the land. "Joe had such an intense interest in the game. If there'd been a different principal in Ballyhale who wasn't interested in hurling and who didn't bother with the school leagues, who knows what I'd be doing now?"

We know what he is doing.

Gathering the rosebuds while he may.