TOM NOLAN of St Mullins is the only Carlow man to have won a Fitzgibbon Cup medal on the field of play and it is only fitting that this hurler, who holds a unique place in the GAA record books features in our Legends series

Tom, selected at left half-back on Carlow's Hurling Team of the Century, began life in Coolnamara, St Mullins in 1935 and though his first introduction to organised hurling came when attending Belcamp College, he recalls fondly Martin Kavanagh and Phil Hayes arranging friendly schoolboy games with neighbouring Graiguenamanagh.

"We would cycle the three or four miles into Graigue and those little games, as well as pucking a sponge ball in Marley Handball Alley, stood to all of us in our later hurling lives" says Tom who was delighted to hear that the Carlow Minor Hurling Championship cup was named in memory of Martin Kavanagh "who did a lot of work for the sporting youth of the area".

Another important early influence on Tom Nolan's life was "a wonderful schoolteacher, Master McCarthy, in Newtown National School" and with a good grounding there it was on to Belcamp College in 1948 where Fr Horan, an Offaly man, was an excellent sports master.

It was during his time in Belcamp, where he played both hurling and football, that Tom first got the opportunity to play in Croke Park and though he harboured thoughts of a vocation - a classmate, Tony Doyle, came within a year of final vows but later shot to fame as the fictional priest Fr Sheehy in 'The Riordans' - the Carlow man graduated to study agriculture in UCD, his academic abilities earning him a state scholarship.

His hurling abilities, too, ensured Tom would fit comfortably into university life.

"I have happy memories of training under Tipperary man Mick Darcy in Harold's Cross, we trained in Belfield too, played matches there and, of course, played a lot of Dublin league games."

Aware that there is opposition to UCD competing at Dublin club level now, he feels, as in his time, it helps lift standards and he saw it from both sides as, again "on the quiet", he hurled with the now defunct New Irelands in Dublin competition.

One of Tom's best memories of his days in UCD was winning the Wall Cup with Albert College. This was an inter-faculty football competition, with Mick Greally of Galway among his colleagues and Tiger Lyons, the great Seamus Murphy of Kerry and Kevin Heffernan of Dublin among the opposition while he also recalls playing football against Galway's Mattie McDonagh.

Tom played junior football and hurling for Carlow on the one day back in 1957 and also played a Meath senior football championship semi-final with Dunshaughlin during his time teaching in Warrenstown. He also gleefully recalls playing one rugby match for UCD, lining out at full-back in Belfield in defiance of the infamous ban on foreign games.

However, it was on the hurling fields that Tom Nolan was to make the greatest impact, right fullback on the host UCD team that beat UCC 4-10 to 4-3 in Croke Park on November 28, 1960. UCD beat Queen's University 8-7 to 1-0 in the Belfield semifinal the previous day.

Donie Nealon, the great Tipperary hurler, was the UCD captain and scored 2-3 against the skull and cross-bones in that final but a player Tom picks out for special mention was wearing a sky blue number 14 jersey that day.

"Big Owen Roe O'Neill of Limerick was a big physical player, great power but with plenty of skill too," enthuses the Carlow man, who himself had to contend with another Limerick man, Stevie Long, who captained UCC to the Fitzgibbon Cup the following year.

Tom Nolan remembers with pride that that UCD team beat the Eastern Command in the annual universities v army match, a prestigious event in which the students, represented by the Fitzgibbon winners, took on the all-army champions.

By the time that Fitzgibbon Cup final was played, Tom Nolan's inter-county hurling career was four years old --"five if you count playing with Meath 'on the quiet' in the 1956 Leinster JHC" - and he played a major part in Carlow's rise from hurling oblivion to a team that was matching it stroke for stroke with Cork, Wexford, Galway and Tipperary.

"One of my little boasts is that in two games against the great Jimmy Doyle I conceded just one point from play," says Tom whose curbing of Doyle helped Carlow to extend Tipperary in two NHL division one games, one in Carlow, one in Roscrea.

Carlow had won back-to-back NHL division two titles in 1957-58 and 1958-59, their first two seasons contesting the points competition, and those final wins over Offaly ("Nolan covered his wing brilliantly") and Laois (absent due to university exams) along with a Leinster JHC first round win over Wicklow in 1957 (Tom, on his debut, cool and methodical at centre half-back as the Barrowsiders won their first match in 22 years!) gave the red, yellow and green the confidence to reach for the stars.

Important incremental gains were made by winning the Leinster Junior Hurling Championship and All-Ireland Junior 'home' titles in 1960, Wexford beaten in the provincial final in New Ross ("Tom Nolan at left halfback was knocked out of the game with a head wound after only five minutes but came back shortly afterwards more willing than ever and played a red hot game throughout") and Cork in the 'home' decider in Kilkenny ("I was unable to start due to University exams, not supposed to play at all, but with passions running high I came on for the closing 20 minutes of a thrilling game").

The pinnacle came in 1962 when Carlow, having beaten Kilkenny in the Leinster final (Nolan solid at wing-half-back), won their first ever All-Ireland title, the Intermediate Championship of 1962, when they hammered London in Croke Park.

It was sweet revenge for 1960 when the exiles beat the Barrowsiders in an All-Ireland Junior final replay at Croke Park.

In Tom's opinion Carlow reached their peak in the All-Ireland Intermediate 'home' final of 1962 when they beat Galway in Birr.

"Galway, remember, were Munster champions, a very useful side and, personally myself, it was my best performance on a hurling field and I think a lot of us feel the same about that day, particularly the backs," he recalls.

"Martin Hogan was outstanding on the edge of the square against the wind. I had said to myself before that match that 'this was my test' and it is the day from which I got the most enjoyment." The AllIreland final against London, when he scored two massive long range points and a subsequent NHL outing against Waterford (he missed the victory over Cork) were the last of Tom Nolan's 36 competitive appearances for Carlow, a career which saw him hip-to-hip with such hurling luminaries as Christy Ring of Cork, Mick Flannelly of Waterford, Billy Duffy of Galway and London, Jimmy Doyle of Tipperary, Paddy Lally of Galway and Ned Wheeler of Wexford, while in his Belcamp days he hurled on Billy Rackard, who lined out with Cleary's of Dublin.

Of Ring Tom has this to say: "He came out on me for a while in the old Cork Athletic Grounds in a league game in 1961, in one tussle I hit Ring a clip and he complained 'what did you that for, boy!' One thing I noticed when he was running out in front was that though he was small there was a stockiness about him, he had width and pace, a great hurler."

Work commitments in the early 60s brought Tom to Mayo where he threw in his lot with Tom Conway's Ballinrobe-Cong, some of the training done with Castlegar in neighbouring Galway.

It wasn't his first time hurling west of the Shannon, having travelled with Mick Bohan, a brother of Fr Harry of Clare fame to play an illegal game or two in the Banner County!

Nolan picked up a couple of Mayo championship medals to add to his healthy haul in Carlow, where he won four minor hurling championship medals with Kilcloney (an exclusive minor side) and six Senior Championship medals with St Mullins, the first in 1954, the sixth in 1965 when making a comeback for a county final replay against Carlow Town.

There he renewed acquaintance with Ned Long, an inter-county colleague of the 50s and 60s.

What Tom didn't tell us is that Long, scorer of a record 5-1 against St Mullins in the county final two years earlier, was held to a single consolation goal.

Tom did reveal, though, that he came across his toughest opponent on the training field!

"I was lucky enough to have 'Red' Liamy Walsh as a club and county colleague, he was a brilliant right half-forward and as I was a left half-back we often came head-to-head in backs-and-forwards practice games, especially at the county training where the quiet but clever Jimmy Phelan knew we would bring the best out of each other."

We didn't press Carlow's lone Fitzgibbon Cup medal-ist as to how those confrontations went, we asked 'Red' Liamy instead!

"Jesus, sure Tom was like the Rock of Gibraltar, very solid, stuck to you like a leech and when he did get the ball he had a huge clearance".

Praise indeed from a peer who many rate the greatest Carlow hurler of them all.

You'd say the 'red lad's' prowess was boosted by those training field battles with his St Mullins colleague who, now 75 years of age, lives with his wife Bernie in Calverstown, Kilcullen, county Kildare where the old photograph of that victorious 1960 UCD Fitzgibbon Cup hurling team is a prized possession.