Before long he's explaining why his beard has been trimmed but that's a tangent and a torrent of stories flooding the evening. It's probably better if we let him fire ahead on his own.

Would you believe it's eight years since I took them to their first junior All Ireland. We ended up with two of them titles. We were in the final against Meath and there was 2,000 people from Waterford over in Portlaoise that evening and I remember a neighbour of mine got so excited there was a wire in front of the stand, where we got the cup, and he got up onto the wire . . . and I think they had to get a ladder and a couple of fireman to get him down. We enjoyed that one though and there was a big homecoming the next day and they brought us through the town here in one of those big open-top buses. We had mighty fun altogether. I didn't enjoy the ride from Abbeyside to here though because we had a character on the team and he was langered and I was holding on to him because he wanted to jump off the bus. He still plays, he's a gas man. Then we had a repeat of the dose in '04. After that I went in and said I want to do the senior job and sure they gave it to me and here we are.

I was involved with the football long before that though. I was with my own club, Kilrosanty, just down the road from here. It would be one of the oldest clubs in Ireland, dating back to 1885, actually. We'd have a junior hurling match every year. The fella that was over our hurling team would drive along in this car with the bag of hurleys in the back and they'd be all cobwebs because they hadn't been used since the year before. He'd be roaring at the lads, 'Don't yis be leanin' on them, yis will break them and we haven't anymore'.

He wasn't lying. One day we were playing Ballinameele and one guy broke the hurley so we had to play on with 14. So it was all football with us and I got coaching young lads.

Sure, didn't things go well there and wasn't I helping out with the county at the same time. There's a great friend of mine, a guy by the name of Greg Fives, he has a bit of property out the road but he never changed. But anyway he's a gas man. He says one day, 'Ay Jackson, I'm in trouble, two of the selectors are after going, will you come with me.' 'Where are you going?' He says Sligo.

I said, 'For f**k's sake, I'm not going to Sligo, there's a great race meeting on and I could make a few bob.' But sure didn't I go and next thing we are in a dressing room up there. He has a terrible short fuse. So he's in the dressing room and screamin' and shoutin' and telling lads what we need is men with liathroidis, and he was thumping the walls and wasn't there a nail sticking out of the wall and next thing his hand stuck to it.

He was manager of the intermediate hurling team for a while as well and they got to the Munster final against Cork.

Wasn't there a film on at this time about the Big Fella, Michael Collins. We went to have a look and on the way home got talking. He says to me, 'You know wasn't it one of their own that shot him'. And I says, 'I know sure, and they call themselves the Rebel County. They shot the best rebel we ever had in Ireland.'

And sure Cork were winning the game well the next day and some fella with a big, thick Cork accent roars, 'Come on the Rebels'. Fives turns around and roars back, 'What are you talking about, sure the best rebel ye ever had ye shot him'.

Jaysus there were lads trying to scale the fence to get to him.

But the best one. . . The first year he was manager of the Waterford football team, he rang Kevin Heffernan. Heffo is wonderin 'Who the bleedin jaysus is this'. 'Greg Fives, ' he announces. 'I'm just after taking over the Waterford football team, have you any advice for me.' 'I have, ' says Heffo.

'Resign.'

Nothing like the stories and sure I don't mind being seen as a caricature because I am who I am. It doesn't ever bother me. The way I look at it, like everything lives, everything withers, everything dies . . . be it a plant, an animal, a person.

But you have to enjoy it. Everyone falls on bad times. I lost my old man last September and I know he was 84-years-old but we were good old mates and I remember him slagging me before we went to play Kerry last year, he was askin' me what I was at, that we'd no business going to play them lads. Like I was there when he passed away and when someone is there all your life and then they draw their last breath, it's not nice. But then at the funeral and burial all my friends, lots of people from Cork and Waterford and all over, that helps ease the burden and it makes you realise how important the GAA is and all the good people there are in it. You will experience all these things and you can get too serious about life. Enjoy it for Christ's sake.

Like I have no brother but I remember the little white box.

He died when he was a baby and I have a sister and she had a twin sister who died in my mother's arms on her first birthday. But to be actually physically there when the old man passes away. . . It will never go away but you have to move on and laugh.

Like I remember when I was a kid I lost my grandfather, but I never saw him die. He died in '69, was a post man and I took over from him when he got sick. Ulcers. It was Christmas and you'd have all this extra post. The problem was if you called into my mother and you were delivering something, there was no way you were leavin without tea and maybe a drop of whiskey.

This was the same in every house in the parish. You'd be langered in the middle of the day. A friend Jimmy was working for the council and had an Anglia car, the one before the Escort, and said he'd give me a hand because I was on a bike at this time. Sure this one night we got really pissed and he wrote off the car and got into awful trouble. Him and Jackson.

That name came out of my love of history by the way.

When I was going to school, I was mad into the old history.

And I loved the American Civil War. I guess my heroes were Robert E Lee from the Confederate States and Ghandi.

But the name came from the general. History and acting.

Loved them both. I used to take part in plays when I was a young fella in the local parish.

The local priest was a gas man.

And we did the rehearsal in his house and one night this guy called Sean Murphy asked if any of us guys wanted a ticket for a TV show on in the Olympia in Waterford. It was for a programme at the time called Cross-Country Quiz, I saw a guy who used to do it. I asked him if he was a spectator, and he said he was on the team. I said sure you're f**king stupid and he said, 'Alright Kiely, sure try me out on a few'.

Sure I started asking stuff like what was Michelangelo's surname. I think I asked him about 50 questions and he answered one. The priest said next night there's a quiz, and we're going Kiely. A few weeks later myself and two young girls in the play, well he brought us up to a quiz in Clonmel and we won.

Sure I went on to win an All Ireland pub quiz and that Where in the World thing in the early '90s. There was a lovely bit of stuff called Theresa Lowe, she was the quiz master. There was a cousin of mine on the team with me called Jim Ryan. He was waiting for the perfect woman like Vincent O'Brien was waiting on the perfect racehorse. Lovely arse, lovely shoulders, lovely head and could run. He was waiting on this woman and I said Ryan it will never happen and sure then didn't he see Lowe. But sure the lights were getting to me and I went for a refreshment and wanted something stronger so myself and Theresa ended up having a whiskey and a fag. She was lovely but Jim was disgusted, I could see it in his face. 'She smokes, Jim, ' I said. 'No such thing as a perfect woman.' He's still not married by the way.

But I love it. General knowledge. Greatest sportsmanship . . . Luz Long. Greatest athlete . . .

You'd have to say Carl Lewis if there wasn't the suspicion.

White lightning too. Alberto Juantorena. Golds in 400 and 800 in Montreal in '76. That's some double. Like my guys find the 400 the hardest.

But you do all that training and coaching for the last 10 minutes. Any ordinary footballer can go out and play for 50 minutes. With a decent bit of training you'll last 60 but it's those last 10. That's why I was happy with us against Clare a couple of weeks back.

First half was shite. But we had a big picture on the wall of Darragh O Se and Aidan O'Mahony, I don't know much about these computers, one of the kids did them up for me.

And there was a picture of the Tommy Murphy Cup and I said, right lads, what the f**k do you want? So we got the answer. Guys that were proud to wear the county jersey. Warriors. That's what I want. Warriors. But we've guys around it too. Michael O'Loughlin. Ned English. He's a lecturer in sports psychology in UCD.

He's also a spud farmer so he's a gas man. And a guy called Ger Power.

But sure Kerry have a great man in charge, a lovely fella.

The best. Pat O'Shea. And for me as a Waterford manager we never talk about winning, just a really good performance.

We're going out playing a football game for f**k's sake.

What's the worst thing that can happen? We get beaten.

We are Waterford. We've only won one game in 19 years.

There'll be a few cameras there, that's only an old sideshow. There'd be a good few of our team from farming backgrounds and they'd be cool dudes, you know. And there are a few that'll get excited alright but I'll blow that shite out of them fairly quickly. We'll be okay.

Now where were we. Oh yeah, the beard, I got it trimmed

NO SECOND TIME LUCKY FOR WATERFORD IN 50 YEARS
MUNSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL WATERFORD v KERRY

Dungarvan, 2.00 Referee G O Connamha (Galway) Live, RTE Two, 1.30

Story of the season and while it may be forgotten later this summer, it's unlikely to be surpassed. For the rest of the country it was just a victory over the worst Clare team in decades, but it was Waterford's first in 19 years of trying. It gave us John Kiely for a little while longer and lines like his effort that this was not a monkey off Waterford's back, rather a planet of apes raised from their shoulders. And then there was RTE's appearance at Fraher Field last week. While interviewing Kiely a county board official asked could they do it from a different angle in order to get the stand in the background and have the place looking less like a playground.

Little snaps that bring us to today, a game 50 years on from Waterford's last win over Kerry in the Munster championship. It won't happen again but that's not the point. Kiely and company are in the limelight and loving it. Their succesful year comes to an end before Kerry reach the starting line but the team Pat O'Shea has named clearly has Cork in mind.

Michael Quirke, right, starts in midfield despite Tommy Griffin returning to full fitness and all over the pitch there's a sense that this is the 15 Kerry hope will retain the All Ireland. As for Waterford, they've gone with the same again although a little merry-go-round sees some positional changes. Gary Hurney switches from centre-forward to midfield, his brother John moves to right half-forward, Brian Wall switches to full-forward, leaving Andy Hubbard at 11.

Kiely said he used some wayward previews of the last game to inspire his team to victory. He's free to use this too and we wish them all the best, but the prediction won't be wrong.

Verdict Kerry by somewhere around the 10-point mark WATERFORD T Wall; J Walsh, T O'Gorman, S Briggs; J Phelan, E Rockett, P Ogle; M Ahearne, G Hurney; J Hurney, A Hubbard, G Power; W Hennessy, B Wall, L O'Lionain KERRY D Murphy; P Reidy, T O'Sullivan, M O Se; T O Se, A O'Mahony, K Young; D O Se, M Quirke; D O'Sullivan (c), E Brosnan, P Galvin; C Cooper, K Donaghy, MF Russell