How and where the story began is a saga in itself, but the afternoon of an obscure league fixture against UCD in the early 1980s is as a good a starting point as any.

That was the day when, only able to field 12 players, the then Waterford RTC prevailed upon Ray Heffernan, who just happened to be nursing a broken hand, to line out with his arm in a sling.

Great was the amusement the UCD full-back line derived from letting Heffernan run out in front of them to incoming balls and seeing if he could rise and strike the sliotar with his good arm.

It was the perfect microcosm of gaelic games in Waterford's third-level institute at the time. No jerseys, not enough players, a couple of sliotars they had to hang onto and dry out after every match. No spirit, no prospects, no hope.

These days? All is changed.

Utterly. These days they win Fitzgibbon Cups for fun, as they've been doing since 1992.

And one of their old boys lifted the Leinster and All Ireland silverware this year. And another old boy, Brick Walsh, lifted the Munster and National League silverware.

And no fewer than five of the 2007 All Stars wore the college colours. Like Offaly, WIT have created a modern hurling tradition of their own before our very eyes. To mark their silver jubilee as a GAA club, Nickey Brennan will launch their history, Fiche Cuig Blian ag Fas, at a function in the college next Tuesday. It is a tale and a half.

It wouldn't be quite the same tale were it not for the influence of one man, Eugene McKenna, the club's founding father. Much as McKenna pleads . . . truthfully . . . that he's "a background kind of guy", without him there wouldn't be a GAA club in WIT. Not this club, anyway. A native of Corduff in Monaghan, where he'd been secretary of the local club, McKenna arrived in Waterford in 1979 as a lecturer in mechanical engineering. He saw enthusiasm for Gaelic games but no focus or structure. That would come in time.

Within a few years the GAA club had been put on an official footing and, peopled by students from Wexford and Tipperary and Kilkenny as well as Waterford, was beginning to make a name for itself on the hurling front. The first set of jerseys . . . blue and white . . . came from Quinnsworth, now Tesco, in Lisduggan and cost the princely sum of �75. Club records show that the one and only fundraising event in 1982 was a disco held in the old canteen, 50 pence the price of entry. It must have been a big canteen.

A turning point arrived in 1987 with the appointment of Colm Bonnar as the first full-time development officer in the GAA. A professional player! Imagine! Paddy Downey broke the story in The Irish Times and much fluttering ensued in the dovecotes as elderly Gaels across the land reached for the smelling salts. "A lot of people weren't happy, " McKenna recalls. "I received phone calls from all around the country." Thanks to the support of Donie Nealon, the secretary, and the late Michael O'Connor, the chairman, the Munster Council agreed to fund half (�2,500) of Bonnar's salary. The other half had to be raised by the club and was.

"Moving forward became much easier after Colm came on board because the workload had simply become too big for volunteers."

Gaining entry to the Fitzgibbon Cup entailed another fight. Although the universities didn't want to allow upstarts like Waterford RTC and UL into 'their' competition, eventually they were made to see the light. "You really couldn't have had a situation where some of the best third-level teams weren't allowed compete in the Fitzgibbon Cup, " McKenna points out. "History proves the right decision was made."

This rising tide lifted boats throughout the club. WIT punch their weight in men's and ladies' football, and the camogie women won the Ashbourne Cup in 1999. The longrunning difficulties posed by the lack of their own grounds will soon be solved, meanwhile: a sports complex at Carriganore, just off the Cork road, featuring three pitches and a full-size floodlit allweather pitch is due to come on stream next September.

Hurling, of course, remains the heartbeat of the club.

Among the features of Fiche Cuig Blian ag Fas is a Best Ever WIT XV. The line-up won't be revealed till Tuesday, but it'll have to be good to beat the following alternative selected by the Tribune.