DINNY CAHILL SAT down at the start of this month and wrestled with the unenviable task of picking apart a machine he’d helped to create.

The man who coached St Thomas’ to their first-ever Galway senior hurling title 10 years ago was plotting how to stop their five-in-a-row run at the semi-final stage.

Now Sarsfields manager, he re-examined the familiar line-up and wondered to himself: How do you overcome David Burke? How do you overcome Conor Cooney?

“When you think you have match-ups done for them, there are some other players. Fintan Burke would be a problem then or someone else would be a problem and that’s the measure of St Thomas’.

“Every one of them are good players and they’re all able to hurl. It’s a joy to watch them and all the things they’ve achieved in the game.”

St Thomas’ won that semi-final and this Sunday, they face Loughrea in a repeat of their 2012 breakthrough final. Win and it’s their seventh title in 11 years, overtaking Portumna on the roll of honour, equalling Sarsfields and Gort. No club has achieved four in a row, never mind five, since the club was founded with the merger of Kilchreest and Peterswell parishes in 1968.

“I’d hear the older folk now, people that would’ve set up the club over 50 years ago, talking about how they’d never have thought we’d have been contesting so many finals,” says 2012 captain Robbie Murray.

While some of his former teammates are hunting their seventh Galway medal on Sunday, he will be forever content with his one; one he never expected when he started out intermediate hurling with the Toms at the turn of the century.

“The first one and the only one, it’ll always be special. Once you break that new ground, we can look on and say we’re a part of the culture that has developed at St Thomas’.

“We reached the standard that all other Galway clubs were at on that day and now the lads are upping the standard of Galway hurling. Everyone has to catch up with St Thomas’ and the way they’re playing. We’d never have thought we’d be the standard that all other clubs would have to reach to win county finals but our small club is the one that other clubs envy.”

Murray says Cahill was a “godsend” for Thomas’ at that time: “I don’t think we’d be where we are now. I’m sure we’d have won one or two but we wouldn’t have had the success without him now in fairness.”

Cahill says all the credit should go to manager John Burke for guiding them up through the grades.

Their success was founded on bands of brothers, including the six Burkes, with the eldest Kenneth now donning his father’s old bainisteoir bib and managing four of his siblings into their seventh finals. At the same time, there’s also an underage structure underneath that’s assembling enough talent to feed the machine.

“What 2012 did was it gave more drive to the underage teams coming up along to work harder and do more,” says John Burke.

“We wouldn’t have the numbers to be winning out county titles underage but we still have great young lads coming through because they’re all doing the right things. It’s all about the coaching structures we have at underage and there’s a lot of great work being done. Everybody is singing off the same hymn sheet.

“We don’t have football. We don’t have any other sport. Hurling is the sport we all play and that’s what we love doing. The pitch and the clubhouse is the focal point in the parish. The schools and churches and that’s it. Every child that goes to school, boys and girls, 99% of them play hurling or camogie and they love doing it. It’s the enjoyment they get out of it. If they’re not enjoying it, they’re not going to stay playing it.”

Cahill recalls that underage structure was already falling into place in 2012.

“I remember David Burke coaching young fellas there and some of them young lads are out playing senior hurling with him now. He contributed an awful lot to the younger players that are on the team at the moment. Not alone is he hurling with them now but he trained them and coached them when they were U12 and U14.

“It was massive that they were able to keep their players local which meant it was easier training and you were keeping that spirit and that community as well. They weren’t being split up and going all over the place.

“That was what made them such a good team as well, that it was a tightly knit community, a tight parish, everyone was there to support one another. The crowds that used to come to training sessions to see them training, it was great. Every night you’d go training, there was always a number of people there watching the training sessions and that inspired the players and made them work harder as well.

“I remember a lot of young fellas that used be training too and the likes of Justin Flannery’s son [Oisín], he was only a child when I was down there at that time and now he’s playing senior hurling and he’s one of the top forwards for St Thomas’. That’s the way the years move on. They’re children one day and they’re playing senior hurling the next day.”

The younger lads of 2012 are now the experienced lads of 2022. When they arrived on the senior scene, Murray says they added a confidence and an ability which swept the team onto a new level.

Back then, it was their two closest neighbours that stood between them and glory. For years they’d been sandwiched between and overshadowed by Gort and Loughrea. Gort especially, who had beaten them in the 2009 county U21 final and 2011 senior semi. Once they got over that hurdle in a replayed semi-final, they truly believed. Robbie’s brother Richie scored three goals in a hard-hitting final and they lifted the Tom Callanan Cup together, Richie in tears; far from the only one at Pearse Stadium that day.

“It was a very special day from start to finish,” says Robbie. “Even afterwards, radio interviews, doing what I’m doing now, it’s not what we were used to by any chance. I’d say they’re dab hands at it now going for five in a row.

“You could see all the flags, the banners, the posters, the placards, the slogans, it meant a massive amount. Everyone wanted to see us, wanted a piece of us, because it was a very special time and you were treated as a superstar by the kids. It was a massive occasion for the area, one that we’re getting so used to now which is a shame because each final is a massive success in itself. They should all be treated the same but I suppose that one was the very first and it was a special one.”

The good times rolled on to an All-Ireland title on St Patrick’s Day, something the club has come close to but never recaptured in the decade since.

“We wouldn’t have big numbers but it’s a very tight-knit community,” says John Burke. “We had hard times and bad times and different tragedies happened but the GAA world everywhere, every county, every parish, it’s brilliant the way people come together. To win things is a bonus, a big bonus, and it keeps people together.

“It’s not going to last forever, we know that. What they’re doing is achieving what they can and enjoying it while they can and that’s what it’s all down to.”

They came together again on Friday night, 10 years to the day since their first county title, for an Up For The Match fundraiser hosted by adopted Thomas’s man Dáithí Ó Sé.

The final word here will also go to an honorary Thomas’s man, even from the opposite sideline.

“They’re making history and long may it last for them,” says Cahill. “That doesn’t happen that often in clubs. When it happens, you have to stand back and admire them and that’s what I’ll do. I’ll stand back and I’ll admire St Thomas’ every day of the week. They’re a serious club.”

• Sunday – Galway senior hurling final: St Thomas v Loughrea, Pearse Stadium, 1.30pm