Timmy Maloney wants to go to hurling heaven but he's always digging holes.

Real ones that is, not just the metaphorical ones he has dug London out of on numerous occasions with his prodigious accuracy from frees and plays.

On Monday morning after scoring ten points against Antrim in an Ulster Champiofsnship game, he was up at 6.30 to drive his digger on a Croydon building site.

MATCH AWARD: Timmy receives the Bushmills Man of the Match award from Antrim Chairman Joe O'Boyle after the Ulster Championship clash at Casement Park.

Home is the hero. Had he scored ten points in a championship game at home, Maloney would have been feted and congratulated in his workplace the morning afterwards.

But this is London, a vast anonymous city.

"My job has nothing to do with hurling. The few Irish fellows on the site with me had written us all off. They weren't that interested." he said.

Still, Maloney is used to indifference. When London were admitted to the Ulster championship in September, they did so on the basis that all their championship games would be played in Casement Park.

Other counties would have balked at being forced to travel 400 miles each time to play in the championship, but London were grateful for what they got.

Besides, the players could hardly tell the difference. Despite a modicum of success in recent years, including four wins out of six in their National League campaign, their home games are played out in front of a few hundred spectators at most.

"It's very disheartening for the players," he says, "it's all football in London. We don't get much of a following and the ones who come out to watch us are always cutting us down.

"The footballers get a bigger following, but they've not won a match for three years."

Maloney, a self-styled "ordinary Irishman on the building sites in London", lives a somewhat peripatetic life like many workers of his kind.

Success on the hurling pitch which included a Munster club medal with Cashel King Cormacs and an U21 All-Ireland medal with Tipperary didn't translate into a secure lifestyle.

He emigrated in the early 1990s. In 1996 the burgeoning Celtic Tiger and the Tipperary senior hurling team tempted him back, but it didn't work out.

"I wasn't good enough for the county. They were supposed to look after me with a proper job, but it didn't work out," he said, "but I'm good enough now."

Still, the temptation to return home again is tempered with a determination not to sell himself short this time.

"There is a lot to packing up and going back again. I could get a job at home, but the money is not as good. I have nothing planned yet, I would have to get a steady job before I'd move."

His ten points against Antrim, including six from play, is an emphatic total, but he bettered it last year.

In an intermediate championship tie against Galway, he scored all 13 of London's scores - surely some kind of record - and all from midfield.

London were denied a victory against Antrim by a disputed point that wasn't - even Alastair Elliot admitted afterwards that Antrim's equalising score at the death was a '65.

Maloney said: "But for the Antrim goalkeeper we would have won, that's for sure.

He pulled off two great saves. They got a big shock, they thought they had nothing to do but go out and hurl.

"We put up a good performance. If we get the breaks again you wouldn't know. Maybe we would be in an Ulster final. Maybe then we'd get a following."