Finishing touch: Paul Flynn has decided to end his career as a Waterford hurler, during which he was known as one of the country's most dangerous freetakers

Kieran Shannon

A couple of days after this year's All Ireland final, Eoin Kelly confided to a couple of teammates and backroom members that a greater disaster awaited Waterford hurling. Paul Flynn had probably played his last game for the county. Kelly couldn't imagine a Waterford dressing room without him. It wasn't so much because he had that knack of coming up with a goal just when you needed one; it was the quiet word he'd have with you when your nerves were getting the better of you. Even though he'd started in only one of the team's past three championship campaigns, they could always draw on the threat of Flynn, the comfort of Flynn. Soon that would be gone.

It's gone now. In recent days Flynn confirmed to a few close friends that his inter-county playing days were over. Last month Ruth gave birth to Matthew. Rachel is 21 months old. Flynn himself is 34. "It's just time," he says. "I think I've given what I can and it's time now to move on."

To some he was the worst trainer in hurling; to others, he was one of its greatest practice players ever. They say he let Waterford down on the big occasion; the record shows he was probably the best-first championship forward of his generation and man of the match in the greatest Munster final ever known. He was the game's greatest goalscoring freetaker since Ring and Rackard, one of the greatest goalscorers of the last 20 years, won and achieved more than any Waterford player of the past 40 years yet some will say he underachieved. Whatever your viewpoint, he can live with it. What was it Ring said? It was never his ambition to play the game for the sake of winning All Irelands or breaking records but to perfect the art as well as possible? That's pretty much how Flynn felt about it. No (senior) All Irelands maybe, but no regrets either.

"I never played for medals or awards or glory," he says. "I played because the game challenged me and I kept finding challenges in it. People say I didn't train hard but I'd say I trained sensibly and I practised hard."

It's where the brilliance at freetaking came from. The love of it came from his time as a kid "when Dad and the boys would go off for the day and I'd be thrown in the back". Cork were kings of Munster and John Fenton king of Flynn's dreams. "In 1992 I played every challenge game for the county minors at midfield," says Flynn. "Then come championship I was named corner forward. I've struggled to get out of there ever since."

The year he studied up in Dublin he must have been out in Bushy Park in Terenure four times a week with a bag of 14 balls. He'd start at one goalpost and drive each ball as far as he could off either side down towards the other posts. Then, wherever each ball had landed, that was the spot to take his free. Any time he'd miss he'd drive it back up the field and try to complete the clean sweep up there.

The field in Ballygunner hosted the same drill day in, day out, year in, year out. It was there where the immortal goaled free in the 2004 Munster final was born. Often he'd tie a tire to the crossbar and fire balls through it. It was all having fun and being creative. In training himself and Kelly would try to hit balls off the upright while on their knees. Dare him and…

Ben O'Connor tried to towards the end of last year's All Ireland quarter-final replay. Waterford were two up when Flynn had a free out by the sideline. "Put this over and I might as well go home!"

"Well, you might as well go f**kin' home so," came the reply seconds before the Waterford lead stretched from two to three.

Looking back, the first four or five years with the county were "a waste". Then Gerald came along. "He called a meeting for October and we were all 'What?' Up to then you'd meet a month before the Munster championship. Gerald was the start of proper training. Whether that's not good enough 12 years on, I don't know. It surprises me to hear that it isn't but then it doesn't surprise me whose rebelling against him. We'd all know the Cork lads want to manage themselves; he obviously wasn't allowing them to do what they were use to doing. Whether he's right or wrong I don't know but he was right for us."

So was Justin. In the last two years of their relationship, Flynn and McCarthy were barely talking for some reason still unknown to Flynn but up to that they shared a mutual respect and he'd like to think, they still do. "In fairness to Justin he tried to be three things all in one – manager, coach, motivator-psychologist. You look at other set-ups and three different people play those roles. [Brian] Cody can rotate the players every few years and it's new to a lot of them but in Waterford we had pretty much the same bunch of players. Maybe we were over-exposed to the same voice and same ideas but most of us will have good memories of our time with Justin."

As for this year's All Ireland final? "Our form came home. The reality is we got a lucky draw and were lucky to get to the final. Eoin Kelly dragged us through a lot of games. We weren't steeled for Kilkenny. In the three weeks leading up to the final, we had only an hour and a half of match-time in training. Kilkenny would have had six or seven hours playing among themselves. I was brought on with about 20 minutes to go when we were about 20 down and it was the most surreal feeling in my life. One of the selectors said to me, 'Every ball you get now, go for the goal.' I said 'I hope I get seven of them then.'"

In recent days he's found himself thinking a lot about the great players he battled with. Steve McDonagh, Wayne Sherlock, Wexford's Colm Kehoe, and of course, the Rock. "I'd have good craic with Diarmuid. When things were going well for Cork he'd be very funny and sarcastic; then if things were going well for us, you'd get a bang in the back of the head. I said to him one day, 'We're coming back at you; I'm expecting a dig any second now.'"

Then there were the goalkeepers. One of the subthemes of Christy O'Connor's Last Man Standing is the fear the nation's netminders had of Flynn and his shots but for Flynn one of them stood heads and shoulders above the rest.

"You'd nearly have to physically stick the ball behind Damien Fitzhenry's neck to get it past him. We played a league game in New Ross and I pulled on a ball from the edge of the square, a drop volley if you like. The ball would have travelled 80 yards if it had been allowed. Next thing it was five yards out on the left side of the goal and your man was getting up. I didn't even see the save, I just heard it hitting his hurley."

Then there was Frampton, Hartley, Ken, Kelly, Dan, Mullane. He'll miss them, not just the great days in Cork and Thurles together but the trips on the bus and the train. This year Mullane had them all in hysterics as he held a five-minute conversation with a furniture store sales rep, wondering if they had a bed for his Labrador. What will he do without Mullane? What will he do without them?

Some day he might return as a selector. He was one to his late and great pal, Greg Fives, with the county under-21s in recent years and found he had something to offer.

"I hate the beat-the-table attitude, especially with young fellas. I'd rather just let them enjoy it and give a word in their ear. I hated this false shouting, this idea fellas had that they needed to shout. No one has to do anything but perform. If a person wants to hit their hurley off the wall, leave them do it but don't ask me to do it.

"But in no way am I regretful. I enjoyed most of it and I hope in a couple of years' time that everyone I played against I'll be able to have an old pint with."

The privilege will be as much theirs as his.

kshannon@tribune.ie