The nervelessness with which he nailed the 65 to send Limerick and Tipp to a third meeting only moments after he'd flashed wide a chance to win the game, having earlier earned and converted the free that yielded extra time. The composure to play the twice-caught sliotar off his hurley and steady himself before firing a point in the 23rd minute against Clare. The presence of mind to shorten his grip and pick his spot for his first goal in the All Ireland semi-final instead of taking a big agricultural wind-up and trying to bust the rigging. That penalty, for its sheer chutzpah as well as its laser precision. His admirers used to wax lyrical about O'Shaughnessy's temperament of steel. His admirers weren't blowing smoke.

Croke Park has made a new man of him?

Not so. Rather it's served to reach into his DNA and draw out of him and decode an essence that was always present. A process of burnishing the original gold as opposed to one of alchemising base metal.

But chances are, unless you're from Kilmallock or Fermoy or their respective environs, that you won't have been aware of the essence because you didn't see the younger Andrew O'Shaughnessy in action. (Or unless you're Val Malone, long-serving PRO of James Stephens GAA club. "Andrew O'Shaughnessy? Played against us for Kilmallock in the 1996 Feile na nGael final at Walsh Park. We beat them 4-3 to 2-2. Didn't mark Jackie Tyrrell, though. Jackie was our full-back.") That being the case, you'll require the guidance of a voice from his past. Step forward Denis Ring, O'Shaughnessy's former coach and manager at St Colman's in Fermoy.

Palm a metaphorical ball the way of Ring, now principal at Blackwater Community School in Lismore, and he'll toss it onto his stick and hare away with it. O'Shaughnessy's three Harty Cup medals with Colman's, his three Dean Ryan medals, his two All Ireland colleges' medals, the 2-8 . . . 2-5 of it from play . . . he hit of the 2-10 that did for Gort CS in the 2001 colleges' final. Even the story of the Limerick county minor final against Na Piarsaigh where Kilmallock had 4-10 on the board after 50 minutes, all of it scored by O'Shaughnessy. "Real Christy Ring stuff, over and over again, " says Ring. "Andrew had it all. The allAmerican high school hero. The full package."

The full package: that was the whole point.

O'Shaughnessy could not have lived by hurling ability alone and he didn't try. Off the field he was a bright kid who came first in his year in the entrance exam, did the full six years in St Colman's and obtained an impressive Leaving Cert before joining the cadets.

On it he was a team player from alpha to omega and through every letter of the alphabet in between. If Ring occasionally flirted with a criticism of him it was that O'Shaughnessy wasn't selfish enough, that sometimes . . . as when offloading to Sean O'Connor moments after the restart of the All Ireland semi-final . . . he was happy to bring others into the game when he could have gone for broke himself. But only occasionally and only a flirtation.

Along with the skill and the selflessness came the courage, another crucial component in the package. For the last two years of his Harty Cup career O'Shaughnessy was a marked . . . usually literally . . . man. Sometimes the attention was legitimate, with every school St Colman's encountered putting two markers on him. More often it was far from legitimate; in one Harty Cup quarter-final, two opposition defenders broke their hurleys off O'Shaughnessy and another floored him by throwing his stick at him, all in the same exchange.

For one Harty semi-final, against a team that had done the heavy on him in the past, Ring decided that emergency measures were called for. So he ran a ringer. Luke Philpott from Doneraile, the St Colman's full-forward, was given the number 13 jersey, a red helmet and a hurley with O'Shaughnessy's name on it. The first ball that came his way, the unfortunate Philpott had the head nearly taken off him by the corner-back at the expense of a 20metre free. O'Shaughnessy, wearing the number 14 shirt, stepped up to the free and stitched it. Realisation came dropping slow.

"I got the wrong man, " the corner-back shouted. Brought up before the stewards afterwards, Ring was supremely unapologetic.

"It was the only thing I could do. The level of abuse Andrew was taking was unreal, and he wasn't getting proper protection from referees."

In a separate incarnation Ring was the Cork minor manager. Their gameplan whenever they faced Limerick consisted of the same unvarying clause with the unvarying same rider: man-mark O'Shaughnessy and make sure the half-back line stayed tight to provide double insulation. "Managing a team against Andrew made me appreciate him even more."

A sparkling senior championship debut during his Leaving Cert, against Waterford in the famously untelevised Munster semi-final of 2003, should have been the prelude to blast-off. Instead it marked the prelude to a write-off of a 2004 due to O'Shaughnessy's induction in the cadets. The Limerick management rarely knew from week to week whether they'd have him or not; he was far likelier to be living outdoors in the Glen of Imaal or somewhere than to be free for training. "To be honest, it was a minor miracle the chap was able to play at all in 2004, " recalls Damien Quigley, one of the selectors. "The stuff he was doing with the army was savage."

Up to this year O'Shaughnessy continued to be the most obvious victim of Limerick's stasis, his plight arguably compounded by a management tendency to bring him out to the half-forward line when he wasn't seeing much possession inside and thus have him hitting balls in to where he should have been himself.

His scoring return in the 2005 championship comprised 1-5 from six starts, 1-3 of it recorded against Antrim and Laois. More so than any other Limerick player, O'Shaughnessy needed the comfort blanket of stable management and settled surroundings. This summer he's finally got it, with the presence of a fit and in-form Brian Begley alongside him widely acknowledged as adding bells and whistles to the Kilmallock man's new lease of life.

The encomiums have been arriving thick and fast of late, just like in the good old days.

Brian Murray says, presumably only half in jest, that O'Shaughnessy "brings down my confidence" every night in training. The goals against Waterford? "He's like that in every training session. He's been like that in every training session since we were under-13, under-14 together. His workrate was always 100 per cent, even when things were going badly for Limerick in recent years. But people mightn't have seen that."

O'Shaughnessy's biggest attribute according to Seamus Hickey, who marks him regularly in training, is his intelligence. The flicks, the touches, the refusal to do the same with the next ball as he did with the last ball. "The hardest part is wondering what he's going to do next. He's a big-game player, no question about it. The open spaces of Croke Park suit him." The less open spaces of the Gaelic Grounds too; Hickey marked O'Shaughnessy in training last Friday fortnight, did fine on him for the first 10 minutes, was delighted with himself, then got taken for 3-3.

Since they've struck camp for Croke Park, Damien Quigley adds, Limerick have been hurling with more method; O'Shaughnessy has been the inevitable beneficiary. "Up to this he was never getting the right ball in the right place. And being from Limerick, there was always this ridiculous amount of hype and expectation placed on him. But give the guy decent ball and he'll do damage."

A concluding anecdote from Denis Ring, who rang the Sunday Tribune back to place the following tale on record. Last year Ring attended a large funeral following a tragedy.

The queue stretched for what seemed like miles, so much so that it took him an hour-anda-half to get up near the funeral home. Among the sympathisers were a number of army cadets who, resplendent in their uniforms, bypassed the queue and were in and out in jigtime. It wasn't until Ring reached the door of the funeral home that he spotted O'Shaughnessy, also in full regalia, three people ahead of him, in the same place in the queue he'd been for the previous 90 minutes. He could have walked past all the other mourners. He hadn't.

"It was only a small thing, " Ring says, "but that more than anything else sums Andrew up." Special young hurler. Special young man.