When work pushed him into the towns of Munster and later towards Dublin, he never lost the link with his club.

For five or six years, while stationed in the capital with AIB, he made a 480 mile round trip most weekends to play Division Two club football or take part in the local championship.

He caught a train to Tralee on a Sunday morning, found a driver going beyond Dingle, togged off, kicked some ball and reversed the trip in the evening.

Later in his career he would set out in his own car, point it southwest and drive until there was no more road to travel.

"There were times when he wouldn't get back to Dublin until the small hours, " recalls a fellow Gaeltacht clubman. "He never let us down and nobody here wouldn't have been surprised when Paidi O Se asked him to get involved with Westmeath."

When he joined Westmeath three years ago, with the fireworks still exploding around the arrival of O Se, O Flaharta's was unheralded beyond the football pockets of West Kerry and South Dublin.

South Dublin because when his legs began to lose a little pace, the long journeys back home had to end. He transferred to Kilmacud Crokes, took charge of underage teams and had a stint as selector at senior level. Some were linking him to the role of Dublin minor manager when the phone rang.

"Paidi was after taking over at Westmeath and out of the blue he approached me, " says O Flaharta, who played minor and under-21 football with Kerry. "We've been friends and played together since we were young lads and at first I was reluctant to get involved. There was work to consider and then the drive to Westmeath. But Paidi can be persuasive."

In late 2003, as the world wondered what the Paidi effect would bring to the midlands, O Flaharta was winning hearts and minds on the wintry training fields of Westmeath with applied and varied training sessions.

"The whole inter-county scene was new to me. I remember before the match against Offaly [in 2004] wondering if I had the team fit enough for the championship."

In a tight battle, Westmeath ran at Offaly for 70 minutes and finished strongly with a point to spare. An ability to raise the tempo at crucial periods remained a trademark for the Leinster championship and O Flaharta's preparations were lauded during a summer of unprecedented success.

But last year was a different story.

Early exit in Leinster followed by defeat to Clare and Paidi O Se's time with the county had come to an end.

Tommy Carr, Tommy Lyons and John O'Mahoney were mentioned, al l men with a higher profile than O Flaharta. But the Kerryman's work with the team hadn't gone unnoticed and last October he filled the role of his friend and former clubman.

"I didn't expect to be approached by the Westmeath county board for the job so when they did it was a bit of a surprise and from day one I looked on it as a great challenge. Before I took the job a lot of the players came to me to see would I consider it and that was important because they're the ones you have to work with every week."

His status with the players was confirmed shortly after he took the post when he coaxed Rory O'Connell out of retirement. It's the first time O Flaharta has had complete control of a senior panel but he says the experience gained under O Se proved invaluable.

With O Se unable to attend every session, O Flaharta was given the opportunity to leave his fingerprints on the team. O Se also noticeably sought O Flaharta's counsel on match days, in contrast to his time as Kerry manager.

"One of the things I'd be most thankful to Paidi for was the chance to run the team from time to time; take charge of training, organise details around games, that sort of thing. Because Paidi had that kind of faith in me I had a good idea of what to expect coming in as manager. Working beside him, I learned a lot. The way he motivates teams, his belief in what he does."

O Se's influence may have seeped in but the new manager still set about building a team in his own image. A month after his appointment, O Flaharta put together a pre-season squad of 33 players, with a dozen new faces.

And the team he picked to start this year's championship had seven changes to the one that played for the last time under O Se. He also handed championship debuts to five players this year.

There have been other obvious shifts in emphasis. Under O Flaharta the first target as manager was to attain Division One football. He accomplished that and learned more on the way.

"The most important day for us this year came when we played Sligo in the league. We had won four games fairly handy before that and Sligo had lost all theirs. We went there expecting a win but they beat us by seven points and it brought us right down to earth. And going to Markievicz Park last weekend, that game in the league stood to us. We knew what to expect and it really drove us on."

Last Saturday was O Flaharta's third successive championship win and the longer the summer lasts, the sturdier Westmeath's football foundations remain.

The Leinster opener against Offaly was seen by many as a dour, drab affair between two counties that wouldn't go far this year, yet both have made it to the top twelve in the country. It wasn't the quality of football that disappointed the manager, rather the way Westmeath applied themselves.

"We wouldn't be happy with our standard of play that day. I don't care what the newspapers or the radio said about the game itself; we just didn't do ourselves justice. It was our first big day out and we lacked that bit of intensity that Division One football brings to a team."

Galway is at the end of the telescope now. Another trip west and the challenge increasing all the time. The rewards too.

When Offaly banished his team to the qualifiers, he quipped that they were "on the tour of Ireland now". Ten weeks later and he's still wondering what they have to do to bring a county team to Mullingar.

"It would have been good for the midlands if Kerry were to play Longford in Longford and Galway were to play us in Mullingar on the one evening.

It's not to be and let's just say we won't be offering a job to whoever flipped that coin. But look, we're still in the championship and that's all we're worried about right now."

A win next Saturday night and he may become the next man from beyond Dingle to have fireworks following him around Westmeath.

GALWAY MUST ADDRESS PROBLEMS AT MIDFIELD ALL IRELAND SFC QUALIFIER, ROUND FOUR GALWAY V WESTMEATH Saturday, Pearse Stadium, 7.00 Live, RTE Two Of next weekend's remaining qualifiers, it's interesting to note that in the three ties with a clear favourite, the underdog is the away team in each one.

It's a relatively short trip from Westmeath to Pearse Stadium in Salthill but a neutral venue . . . which was the provision at the same stage last year . . . would at least have evened the psychological playing field.

Westmeath carry some momentum into Saturday's game as they've racked up a couple of decent victories on the road already this year, two wins by a point to Limerick and Sligo.

And Galway will have to regroup following their exit in the Connacht final last weekend by the same margin.

Firstly, they will have to address a woeful performance at midfield.

Ronan McGarrity dominated this area for Mayo and a fine forward line, the kind Galway possess, will never find joy without the ball in hand.

Michael Donnellan chipped in with a decent contribution but his abilities could be put to better use closer to goal. Joe Bergin provides a more obvious option as an out and out centre-fielder and he may be deployed here with Donnellan moving in to replace the injured Sean Armstrong. The fit again Paul Clancy is another who will be pushing for a place in Armstrong's absence.

When the year was still in its infancy Galway were touted as the proverbial team in transition but as the league advanced, their stock improved. Since then, though, they've stuttered through Connacht.

Without the contribution of Michael Meehan they could have come undone against Sligo and they recorded a schizophrenic performance in Roscommon.

They've yet to put a convincing 70 minute game together and there are cracks that Westmeath could exploit.

At times on Sunday, Galway looked shaky defensively and only for some terrible Mayo shooting, the game would have been beyond them at half time. Dessie Dolan won't squander such chances. His early return from injury has provided the midlanders with the required shot in the arm and they've improved from their Leinster championship showing against Offaly in May.

The outcome to this one isn't as clear-cut as it may seem at first.

Westmeath have the mental resilience to survive a close encounter but they'll have to get to that stage first. If David Duffy can control midfield for them, then they have at least a fighting chance of an upset.