It's how he feels about Donegal and certain Donegal people and their constant craving for rumours that eventually tangled him up before he was spat away as a reject.

There is another side though. The angle of approach that involves the night of Donegal's victory over Westmeath in the Division Two semi-final. The night of 16 April when he met his girlfriend for a meal, bumped into teammate Eamon McGee and they all got well stuck into five or six beers. He left the pub in Gweedore that night, made it home and played for his club the next day. By mid-week he was off the Donegal panel though. He broke the rules, no qualms, but you don't hang a man for pissing in a ditch and you certainly don't hang him because others have done likewise in the past.

"Definitely there has been indiscipline there over the last few years. Since I joined the panel, it's been no secret, after games we like to go out and enjoy ourselves. There was the Dublin game [the All Ireland quarter-final of 2002], we were up in Croke Park and we got our draw and it was a great buzz and we got carried away with the whole lot of it. Looking back now we know the carry on was silly but we've grown up. The scene has changed. When that was happening we had a very young squad. There were a lot of 18, 19, 20 year olds, a lot of us were in college and trying to keep the head down was a bit of a problem, maybe a serious problem. But they have all matured now and are a wee bit older. After games they are doing the right recovery rather than going out and drinking."

This year it was going to be different. It was to be a flashback because after all the hype of the early years . . . the All Ireland quarter-final of 2002, the All Ireland semifinal of 2003 . . . the wunderkids stopped playing and began to wonder. The abrupt end to 2004 against today's opponents, the disaster of 2005 that coupled relegation in the league with defeat to Cavan in only the second round of the qualifiers. Time for a change. Time for Brian McIver?

"At the time when Brian McEniff stepped down we were waiting and watching names like John O'Mahony being linked. Then Brian gets it and we didn't know, we had heard about Ballinderry yet it was a bit of a surprise. But the first impression was professionalism and he had this attitude we needed because it was getting to the stage when, at 24, it was irritating that my first season had gone so well. First time to play in Croke Park and all the rest and there was the All Star. I was saying if I could turn back I'd probably take that as my last season and you'd leave on a high and that would be it.

"The second year then you're trying to emulate the first. You try too hard and it's something that doesn't always work. In my case it didn't. It takes a couple of years to settle in and get your feet on the ground but then every year you're basing yourself on that one year and you are thinking back to what I was doing that I'm not now.

Suddenly you find it hard to concentrate. But when he [Brian McIver] came in, we were saying that's what we wanted. Someone to cut it out [indiscipline] and get us back playing rather than thinking. We wanted a few pints after matches but we decided if he said no we would go with that. That was said throughout the panel, whatever this guy says, we're with it 100 per cent. The panel stuck to it."

A crack in the armour.

They didn't all stick to it, least of all Cassidy. In April, Shane Carr walked away from the team. The local chatter was that he was fed up of waiting for his place behind guys that were routinely breaking McIver's policies. Cassidy denies that, claiming Carr couldn't give the commitment due to work and marriage and was slightly aggrieved at being left on the bench having started in so many previous campaigns.

"There's a perfect example of what it's like up there, the whole ordeal with Shane Carr. Rumours are a Donegal thing. If there's nothing said, somebody will make up something. That's why Donegal is the way it is. I don't know if these people support Donegal but they don't seem to want us to do well and there are plenty of those people inside the county. There's always rumours and some hassle."

So why give those same people, so soon after the affair with Carr, a chance to talk about you and get you in such trouble?

"Everybody is different.

The way I would be before the championship is I would train very hard and I would say, 'Right I'll enjoy a good night and get back to work again after'. Other people might feel that they'll go off the drink for three or four months. That night I hadn't had a drink in six or seven weeks and I wasn't even looking at the league. Sure, it might have been a title shot, but who looks at that. The championship is the big one.

So, I said I'll get my head right for it. The big prize is handed out in the summer.

And to be honest, I didn't think there'd be any harm in it. It's only a few bottles of beer, we were playing for the club the next day and we knew there'd be no hassle.

The next day you got the feeling though, that some things were being said. I was saying, 'Gee what's this all about?'" He found out exactly what those things were that Tuesday at training. McIver called himself and McGee aside.

Cassidy began to explain what had gone on, that it was just a few bottles rather than drowning in a bath of liquor.

That was it until the phone rang the next day. "Brian said I'm off the squad. I said fine but after that I rang him up and told him the story again and he said 'Ah, I think there is more to it than that. There were more than five or six beers.' So obviously people came back to him and told him a different story which is sad because there were plenty of people there that night that could have told him what was the truth and put him right.

"So at the start, the first couple of days, I was thinking, 'Here, I'm telling you what happened, you've seen the effort I put in over the last few months so, Jesus Christ, why believe someone else, this really isn't on Brian'. But the more things broke, I noticed he was put on the spot and he had to act. So it's the county board I'm more angry towards. These are your own people that you've been bursting your arse for this last four or five years. Then all of a sudden because of this man and his reputation, they feel they have to do something, be big men. After that, I never talked to anyone in the county board. That was enough and I just decided to get out of there. I was told I was off the squad and that was it.

"Brian rang back after the next game and he said come back into the panel but I had my mind made up at that stage to go to America for the summer. But I spoke to Brian a couple of times after that and he had to act because he came in with this reputation and the whole county was waiting to see it.

That's again people in the county. You think they'd want to keep the players they have."

But there's been an upside.

Away from it all, he's realised what he could have missed out on. What's a few beers in the greater scheme of things.

What sacrifice is one summer for a few months he'll never forget. He also knows he could so easily have missed out on all these new experiences and that others will.

"I said that I'd always do it at least once and this was it. Now I've done it once I'd love to do it again. I don't regret it at all and it's just been good. It's something that I would have missed out on completely and it's woken me up to a few things. When you are back home, the way you live your life. . . it's just football 24 hours a day. You don't go to weddings because there's this game, and you've a game on a Sunday so you never get to anything the two weeks before that and it's been that way since I joined the panel.

It's definitely opened my eyes that there is more to life than football. Of course I miss it but you've got to live your life a little bit as well. For five years there's been no travelling. Playing GAA you miss out on some of your youth."

So will football be less important when you go back in four weeks, now that you've woken to the wider world?

"I love football and Donegal is Donegal. Despite everything I love it there and in a way I am looking forward to getting back. Like, I've watched every Donegal game and times like the last 10 minutes against Armagh, it was tough. I was saying, 'F. . k it I should be there'. They were struggling to get the ball in midfield and I was telling myself over and over I should be there. And after it when you speak to the boys, it's worse again because you hear their thoughts and you like to think you could have changed it.

"It's not guilt though, I'm just sorry I couldn't be there on the bench, just to give them a little dig out if they needed it. But they are still there and even though the last few years Fermanagh have been our bogey team I know the boys will be well tuned. Hopefully we can get it right and get back to a quarter-final where we belong because that group is well capable of making it even further.

"But for me the worry is that I'm going back to play for people in the county board that hung me out to dry for no other reason than their own reputation. Will I be able to give the same sacrifice as I have in previous years when in the back of my mind I know what they did to me? I'll have to wait and see because I don't know. I'm looking forward to playing with the club and I do like the lads and the management team in Donegal so I'll have to see what the story is when I go back to Ireland."

Suddenly those who cast him away will be waiting anxiously.

SWAGGERING FERMANAGH TO CONTINUE LOW-KEY BACK DOOR JOURNEY ALL IRELAND SFC QUALIFIERS ROUND FOUR FERMANAGH v DONEGAL Bewster Park, Eniskillen, 2.00 Referee E Murtagh (Longford) Live, RTE Two, 1.40 It's not often enough that we fully involve you, dear reader, so let us rectify this situation. It involves a little favour on your part, but we promise it won't take long. Cast your eyes down through the next few lines, take it all in and then answer the simple question below.

Start. The Paddy Campbell situation, rightly or wrongly, has taken over as all that's been said and thought about Donegal in recent weeks . . . Derren Brown couldn't block all that out. We're still not sure if Michael Doherty, a key player from play not to mention a crucial free-taker, will take his place on the field and if he does, there's a giant question mark loping around over him.

Neil McGee is not sure if he'll start in his favoured position of corner-back or if will he have to cover for Campbell at three. Tony Donoghue, James Gallagher and Leon Thompson haven't been sure if they will start at all for some time because of the ongoing situation above. Adrian Sweeney and Conal Dunne started the Ulster final, they don't today. Colin Kelly comes into the team for his first start since early June. Ciaran Bonner switches from half-forward to full-forward. Stop.

And now the question. Do you really think Donegal can win?

As versatile as this side, and Brian McIver, have proven themselves to be by accounting for Down with an experimental team all those rounds ago, all these things weigh heavy with the greater gravity that late summer brings. And contrast that with Fermanagh. Yet again, so little has been made of their progress through the back door, you'd think they've never made an impact in this fashion. In fact, so little has been made of them, we can't be sure they even exist.

If they do, they've played it well. In fact they've played it like Gary Kasparov all those years ago. From the side that accounted for Wexford last time, there's one change with Shane McDermott returning to active duty. Why? The simple matter of his suspension ending. And ever since Marty McGrath returned there's been a greater swagger and quality about Charlie Mulgrew's team, one that might have helped them over Armagh in the Ulster semi-final. That's something they looked far more likely to achieve than Donegal did in the Ulster final.

But they won't complain now about missing that trip to Croker because they're convinced their trip to the capital lies ahead of them. And given the venue and Charlie Mulgrew's knowledge of his home county we can't disagree. Oh, it won't be pretty and won't be a million miles from their victory over Antrim at this venue in the Ulster quarter-final.

This will be a slog with the last man standing.

Verdict Fermanagh by two

FERMANAGH C Breen; R McCluskey, B Owens, S Goan; S McDermott, H Brady, R Johnston; M McGrath, M Murphy; E Maguire, S Doherty, C O'Reilly; A Little, T Brewster, M Little

DONEGAL P Durcan; N McGee, AN Other, K Lacey; E McGee, B Monaghan, B Dunnion; N Gallagher, B Boyle; C Toye, M Hegarty, R Kavanagh; C Kelly, C Bonner, AN Other