A MONTH after Kerry took a wrecking ball to Mayo's challenge in the 2004 All Ireland final, Liam McHale and Ronan McGarrity sat in the booth of a Ballina diner, talking of future hoop dreams and football nightmares just past.

When they surveyed the wreckage Kerry had left in their wake, McGarrity found that he hadn't enough football played to expect or deserve an All Ireland.

McHale, a selector to John Maughan at the time, noted something else.

"I have the utmost respect for the likes of David Heaney and James Nallen but we definitely don't have enough leadership. And you can't make leaders out of fellas that aren't leaders. They're great footballers but they're not leaders and when the shit hit the fan against Kerry we had nobody to grab Ronan by the chest and say 'Listen, do A, B, C and D.'" For all their undoubted contribution to Mayo and the mesmerising football they had Mayo playing for most of 2004, we now know Maughan and McHale were working on a few basic, false presumptions. Vince Lombardi once said, "Contrary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born. They're made."

Maughan and McHale clearly subscribed to the opinion of many people. Together they might have brought Mayo to heights it hadn't been in four decades but as John Maxwell once identified as an irrefutable law of leadership, "You will only go to the highest level if you develop leaders instead of followers."

These days Nallen and Heaney have no qualms about grabbing a teammate to tell him what needs to be done.

They've had no hesitation in sometimes confronting Mickey Moran and John Morrison either. Call it the Kieran McGeeney Factor. When Mick Galvin was asked what made his Na Fianna clubmate special, Galvin said it was his bravery. "Kieran's not afraid to tell the truth. Ask players when they retire what they regret most and they'll say it was not pointing out to a teammate that they were lazy or yellow." This year Mayo's veterans decided they'd enough regrets and defeats in their careers without taking them into retirement.

They'd have to encourage and enforce.

"I've never talked as much or rang as much or been rung as much by other players, " says David Brady. "If someone's not putting it in, they're told. Because you're ringing the guy and saying, 'Look, I need you to burst your ass.'

There were occasions where guys came on and were taken off, like Aidan Kilcoyne against Leitrim, and I found myself ringing, saying, 'Hang in there. It's a long year.' Aidan could have drifted away but he wasn't forgotten about." Even one veteran infamous for his reticence has become more vocal. "Ciaran [McDonald] is another guy calling [teammates] constantly, " says Brady. "He might tell everyone a different story, butf" Then there's the M&M factor. The Mayo players don't seem to have the same adulation or affection for Moran and Morrison as the Donegal players of 2002 would, but their admiration and appreciation for the pair is tangible too. "There's a great willingness from management to listen and that's making a difference, " says James Nallen. "They're ringing players, wanting to know what we think. There's a greater sense that we're all in this together. The hierarchy isn't there. We're all more on the one level."

All year the dialogue has been two-way. Brady recalls Moran sounding him out in January about the idea of Kevin O'Neill returning from the inter-county wilderness.

Brady told him if O'Neill never kicked a ball it would be worth it for his influence on the younger players. After the Laois replay it was Brady's time to approach Moran. "I should have come on that day but the management hadn't faith in me or my injury. I could only tell them what I knew and that was my foot was perfect again. Was I afraid that this year it just wasn't going to happen for me? Let me tell you, it was going to happen. I had to say something to Mickey, I did and after Dublin, Mickey said I was right in what I did."

After they barely beat Leitrim in Carrick-on-Shannon, the players told management to discard their beloved nut formation. It might have worked in Derry but Mayo didn't have a Muldoon or Bradley. Moran and Morrison haven't used it since. As Nallen says, "They know how they want the team to play but they also know there's no point in making it play a style it isn't able to play."

It's a peculiar dynamic though. The players took ownership of Hill 16 without even seeking the blessing of their manager. Moran would later say that if it was something "the family" had decided on, he had to go with it. But could you imagine Mickey Harte or John Allen, facilitators rather than managers that they might be, not being notified of such a decision? If your son decided he wanted to study in England, wouldn't you like to know before he was already in England?

Judging by his comments at half-time on RTE Radio, Ciaran Gallagher, the team's third selector, seemed to have known beforehand, yet Moran's initial reaction was to call his sons home. Heaney and Brady told him they were staying where they were. Last December, Morrison had told them the story of Rosa Parks, the black seamstress who refused to give her seat up to a white man on a public bus in Alabama. By sitting down she had taken a stand for her people; some day the Mayo footballers would have to stand up for theirs. Now the Hill was their Sister Rosa moment, their Red Sea place to take a stand.

After the game the players took the initiative again. As Moran was finishing explaining to reporters how Mayo had won a classic, a backroom member shouted, "Hurry on there, Mickey!" A team meeting was starting in the warmup room.

And so here they are, one game away from winning it all.

That is a credit to Moran and Morrison's capacity to coach, to have a team fit and fresh, but above all their wisdom to serve and follow their players. Because for all the inspired brainstorming sessions Moran and Morrison have had in their car heading to and from the north, just as crucial to Mayo this year has been the a car heading to and from the south. Three times a week Peader Gardiner hops into the backseat in Tuam, where Nallen and Heaney collect him on their way from Galway. On this Mayo team, they lead from the front.

Last Tuesday they fielded the usual questions. About Nallen and Brady's first year . . . '96. About Heaney's first . . .

'97. About the last time they were in a final . . . '04. A reporter asked Nallen did those losses haunt him. "None of them haunt me, " he replied.

"A defeat is something to rebound back from. It's not terminal, to put you down for the rest of your career." It's nothing, as Lombardi used say, but education.

In that team meeting after the Dublin game, some of the lessons of '04 were spelt out.

Going into that final, Conor Mortimer was a certain All Star, the poster boy for the GPA's Club Energise advertising campaign. In the final, he was taken off and didn't even get an All Star nomination. Mortimer's name wasn't mentioned in the warm-up room but the words there were for his ears. "I said all the accolades have been won, " said Brady. "Player of the Year, top scorer of the championship, All Stars; no one has to worry about all that now, no one should have it on their minds. We said it because certain guys needed to hear it."

Even a veteran like Heaney had been affected by the buildup in '04. "People were on about All Stars and trips away and banquets and homecomings, " says this year's captain.

"You tried to push it out of your mind but people were constantly talking about it and it was hard not to get sucked in."

Heaney's learned. This year there's been no open day to the public. Rule Number One: To win it for the people, you must now forget about the people. Rule Number Two: It's not about 55 years; it's about 70 minutes. Rule Number Three: It's not an occasion you're playing, it's a game.

"Today [last Tuesday] my uncle rang me from Limerick, saying, 'Kerry, they're good, but you can beat them.'

He meant the best but it's not what you want to be listening to. We've told the younger lads, if they're going to eat out, eat in quiet places. Don't read the papers. I'm telling them now to turn off their phones for all of next week.

There's no presentation, no banquet, no homecoming.

We'll play it as if it's a club league game."

Brady nods. "If we have to get it f***n' tattooed on our arms . . . 70 minutes."

They've absorbed lessons Kerry taught them on the field too. In '96 they had the consolation of performing. In '97 and '04 they didn't. But performing isn't enough either.

Last year's All Ireland quarter-final was barely mentioned at last week's press night but Nallen hinted at it.

That day Mayo racked up 18 points, without looking like winning. After '04, management seemed almost happy with a respectable performance.

"The best chance to win is to perform, " says Nallen, "but you also need to be aware of the style of other teams and that the way you play is the one that's going to win out."

For all Mayo's flair, they do not have the ammo for a straight shootout with Kerry.

In '04 they were particularly naive. Kerry were on the rampage yet the only stoppage in the first half came when David Brady was brought on for Fergal Kelly. Think Tyrone would have been that innocent? "On given days we probably weren't cynical enough . . . well, pragmatic enough, " accepts Nallen. "We kept trying to play ball when alternative routes might have been more fruitful, like breaking the play, breaking their momentum."

And what about Nallen himself? Does he need to get more pragmatic? He's only been booked twice in his whole career. The other outstanding centre back of his generation, Kieran McGeeney, nearly gets booked every second game. Is that why one of them has a senior All Ireland and the nice guy keeps finishing second?

"Maybe. But I guess leopards don't change their spots. What suits Kieran as a player might not sit well with me. The likelihood is I can't play that game.

So if Mayo need that kind of player, then it's probably not me they should be looking to.

I'd like to think I bring other skills that are required for us to win. Otherwise we should be looking at a different number six."

Some day soon Mayo will have to. And another barnstorming midfielder. Nallen is 31. Brady is 30 and this year alone suffered three serious injuries. "I know I haven't said this to his face, " says Brady, "but I'm saying it now because I probably won't play with him again . . . James Nallen is everything you'd want in a person and teammate."

Heaney is coming towards the end too. He's 29 but been plagued with leg and groin injuries for years.

Before they go, there's one thing they want to do. Personally, Brady feels the pressure is off him, he won his first All Ireland 18 months ago with Ballina. "It's not as big a deal now, " he says, "but it would be some deal if we won it." For Nallen, another All Ireland club holder, it's the same. To win next Sunday, "would represent completeness".

They've lost but never been losers. They've lost but never been defeated. They've persisted and they've learned. In the past Mayo were maybe beaten as much by themselves and the occasion as by Kerry. That won't happen this year. Player power will see to that.

kshannon@tribune. ie