He'll guide you through Castlebar with precision until you arrive at the door of his office in the county council building and give you all the time you need. . . but for some that's just an ego in need of constant refuelling. When he's finished he'll drive you through the town, leave you off at a filling station to get a bite to eat for the journey home. . . but for some that's just the final chance to lay on a charm offensive. In eight years in charge of Mayo he won four Connacht titles and reached three All Ireland finals, having found them languishing originally in Division Three when he took over in '95. . . but for some there was more in those Mayo teams than just provincial honours and near-misses. He turned Mayo into constant contenders with a team full of stars. . . but for some there were other stars left to glow in the dark because Maughan just couldn't and wouldn't be threatened in his ivory tower.

So go on, make up your own mind.

"It wasn't tempting to stay [on in the Mayo job] despite everything we had done together. Not at all in fact.

Having said that I think Mayo are getting closer all the time to an All Ireland. I think they have been one of the most consistent teams in the country. But people are lamenting, and maybe rightly so, all those missed opportunities and all those final defeats.

They've been crying about this and whinging about that but the reality is that we've had very good performances and we've entertained people up and down the country. You still get a lot of stick but I'm well aware that it comes with the territory. People by their very nature have got to vent their frustration and anger at somebody.

Whether it's over some little issues or not picking somebody's son or brother or clubmate, that's going to be a problem in some quarters, so you are not going to be popular all of the time.

"Once you recognise that you become hardened by it over the years. But still. . .

there is nothing worse than the articulate incompetent and there have been quite a few of those around the place in Mayo. And they've had opportunities in papers maybe to have a cut or a pop and unfortunately managers don't have the opportunity of redress and I certainly wouldn't aim to get involved in trying to redress a situation in that scenario. Quite clearly people have been quite ignorant and that lack of knowledge can be a dangerous thing in certain quarters.

But my conscience is clear. As regards Mayo football I did my very very best and I have no regrets."

A well-spoken diplomat, there is still a justified anger and frustration bubbling away just beneath Maughan's skin. It simmers through his sentences, occasionally erupting to the surface in a short, sharp, piercing burst, prismed in very definite directions. He's taken plenty on the chin and stood tall but despite all that, he's still a Mayo man and whatever comes good for his home county, he'll see a big part of himself in that.

"Good luck to the new management and the Mayo county board. Apparently there were people down here saying, 'give this guy a chance, give that guy a chance'. The new Mayo management decided to give all those guys a chance in the 2006 league campaign. But here's the reality. Ask yourself this. Of the Mayo squad now, despite their league campaign and despite the volume of players that passed through, how many [of the new faces] are still there? Very, very few.

Every player that is involved, to the best of my knowledge maybe with one exception, came through my system and were involved in the teams I was involved with. So I mean, people fall by the wayside and there are all sorts of issues along the road of managing a team."

And what of the likes of David Brady?

"How many times has David Brady started in this league campaign this season?

He's played very, very little football. People have perceptions of players and there were several others and questions over why they didn't play when I was in charge.

But John Maughan had no agenda with anybody. All John Maughan wanted to do was get the best out of Mayo football and the players that were interested in playing and adhering to a policy of being the best they can be for the team, not for themselves. It's not about John Maughan. It's about a Mayo football team trying to be the best they could be.

"And only I and the management team and the players involved know what goes on. It's the same with any team I'm involved with. There will always be question marks over why that guy or this guy didn't play. Like if Mayo go on and win an All Ireland title in 2006, I'll applaud them and be delighted as a Mayo man, but let's see how all those players that John Maughan left out in the past go on and do. And if they do well, I've got something wrong and I've called it very badly wrong."

It's for Mickey Moran to call it now. Maughan was surprised it wasn't John O'Mahony after all the hints he dropped last season and he also believes it surprised the Mayo county board when O'Mahony turned a blind eye.

"John O'Mahony would have his own ideas. I got the impression all last year that John O'Mahony wanted the Mayo job through his prompting that appeared from time to time and my genuine impression was that John O'Mahony would have taken the Mayo job. But for reasons best known to himself, maybe he saw himself getting involved in a political campaign, I don't know, he didn't.

I would think the Mayo county board would have suspected he was going to take the Mayo job too. . ."

But enough of the past.

Suddenly it's about the future of Maughan and Roscommon. It's about a new beginning, a new challenge where he starts low and aims for just progress rather than prominence. The first step on that ladder came shortly after his introduction. Big names were left at home on the couch. Shane Curran.

Frankie Dolan. Francie Grehan. Ciao tutti.

"We sat down with the new management team and said we are going to be in this for a couple of years and quite clearly we needed to start off with a young, fresh group of players. We decided this was going to be our squad. And we felt that in order to be fair and give everyone a fair crack we needed to maximise the potential there. We knew we would have to start with the 19, 20, 21 year olds. And we picked our panel so I can't be accused of dropping anyone because we didn't, we started up with a fresh panel and then drove on."

But was there a more diligent way to let certain names know their inter-county career was over, rather than them reading it in the papers?

"What's a fairer way? We were a brand new management team. Maybe somebody from a previous management team should give them a call and be acknowledging the loyalty of their cause. I didn't know about Shane Curran or Frankie Dolan or Francie Grehan, I knew nothing about them. I couldn't be phoning fellas up, it's not my job to applaud them for services rendered to the Roscommon county board. I wasn't there while they were playing away so that's not my job to do that.

I was picking a new panel. I wasn't letting anyone go. A new panel.

"And managing a team is not an objective exercise, it's subjective in that you go with your gut instinct of what you can get right. I'm not as stupid as some people might make out. I can be a fair judge of a footballer. We picked a panel that we thought would represent Roscommon football well. We did it with no agenda to hurt feelings, with no agenda to antagonise people or to make it a popularity contest. And it wasn't a tough decision. Tommy [Carr, former Roscommon manager] is a close friend and I talked to him about taking on that job and I got a picture of what the stories were [in the past]."

Of today he reckons he's facing a challenge as great as leaving a season behind without voices criticising from the shadows. "We'll be spirited and we've good team morale.

We can't guarantee success.

But we can guarantee we'll give it our all." And if you win?

"Oh, it'd be a shock, I'd be shocked. I reckon Galway by five but who knows, that's the beauty about sport."

Made up your mind about him yet?