WHEN he thinks back on the summer just past, the summer he owned, he tingles at the memory of the bus rides into Croke Park. The first one was Armagh, his first ever game starting for Kerry there. His head was in turmoil on the way down from Dunboyne, "thinking all this stupid stuff" like all the talk of how tough Francie Bellew was, how "the northern teams had this kind of hoodoo thing over us", whether "I'd be alright playing these f***rs". Then Croke Park appeared on the skyline, and he skipped forward to The Killers' 'Mr Brightside' on his i-Pod. As the track changed, so did his mood.

"I put on that tune, boy, and forgot about everything. I was like 'Yes! Can't wait!' Goosebumps flying up out of my arms, like, seeing the Kerry crowd all waving at us as we're going past on the bus. Some fellas wouldn't look out the window at all. I'd be looking out the window. Some fellas in the dressing room don't talk at all, don't look at anybody togging out; they just focus, like. I go around, 'You right, Seamo?' 'You right, Gooch?' Loving it, like."

Twenty minutes into that All Ireland quarter-final though, Kieran Donaghy was not loving it. By that point the previous week he had set up three goals, had seen his marker taken off and even had time to feel sorry for the guy, "you know, with his whole family having come down from Longford to see him, like". Now Francie was eating him, without salt or sympathy. Francie; Donaghy can't help but smile when he thinks of him. His strength. His honesty. His cuteness.

"He's not one of the country's best manmarkers for nothing. You know the way if you pull a jersey and I move, you see the jersey give? But Francie had me by the shorts, like, and I could not f***n move! I was turning around, 'Ref!

Umpire!' but they couldn't see the give.

So, of course that had [Armagh goalkeeper, Paul] Hearty going, 'You're just a basketball cry-baby, Donaghy!' A big basketball cry-baby!"

Then a ball came in, along the endline.

It was one ball that he was out in front of Francie for, and one that Kieran McGeeney couldn't sweep back and intercept either. It was Donaghy's. "All I had to do was catch it. I always say when I'm coaching kids basketball, get the ball first, because often they're passing it to someone in their heads before they even catch it, and it goes straight through their hands. I made that cardinal mistake. Looking where to pass and it trickled over the sideline. Right in the corner, where all the Armagh fans were. And they let me know about it."

So did Hearty. "He was giving me stick all day. [Donaghy, in a first-rate impression of a northern accent] 'Ah, Francie, you have him f***n' bate up a stick!' He was shouting right in my ear, like. Francie turned round at one stage as if to say, 'Alright, calm down, Paul, boy; you're annoying me now at this stage.'

So there I was, winning f*** all ball, getting eaten alive by Francie and this other fella roaring down my neck. I was saying, 'Ah, Jesus, I'll either be thrown out midfield now or I'll be taken off.'" Then things turned. Colm Cooper ran in, told him to keep going.

"Don't think it isn't your day. All you need is one chance, and you'll take it." Next thing he was repaying that gesture by laying a ball off for Gooch to point. Then he won another for Mike Frank Russell. Suddenly Kerry and Donaghy were in the game.

"Jack [O'Connor] said it to me at half-time. 'Donaghy, you could have turned your hole to it after 25 minutes because everything was going against you, boy, but you're after getting us two points there.' And they were big points, like. Now we were only two down and we felt as if we were leading."

At the break, two adjustments were made. Donaghy "wasn't long opening the knots in my shorts, I tell you, and tying it again" to have some give from Francie's grip, and O'Connor told his players to make sure they were far enough up the field to launch ball into Donaghy and bypass McGeeney. Within minutes, both changes paid off. Francie was caught pulling Donaghy, allowing Russell to tap over the equaliser, and then Sean O'Sullivan played another diagonal ball in from the wing. Donaghy won it, bumped Francie to the ground and rifled it past Hearty.

If he had to do it again, he'd have just kept running out. It's how he'd always reacted to scoring a goal for Austin Stacks. But this was his first for Kerry and his first against Hearty. Four years of collective frustration, 40 minutes of personal frustration, were unleashed in the hanging-on-the-rim roar and jibe he couldn't resist.

"Who's crying now, baby? !"

With that catch and kick, everything had changed. That match. That season.

Football as we knew it. His life as he knew it.

Destiny had called. Mr Brightside.

The phone rang early. It was a kid named Kieran Donaghy, the most talented 19year-old in Tralee . . . maybe in the entire county. Back in August I had asked him to meet me for dinner. We could get to know each other and he could think about joining the Tigers. "You pick the restaurant, " I told him. Donaghy picked a place downtown called the Brogue Inn, a really nice spot, and ordered the 25-euro T-bone steak, the highest-priced item. "With extra spuds, " he added.

I did a quick pocket-money calculation. "Just the soup for me, " I said.

"And a glass of water."

After his giant steak arrived, I told him he'd have to work hard. He listened casually between bites of steak and requests for more chips and ketchup. Donaghy had the face of an 11-year-old boy, yet he had huge hands. And he cursed all the time; he said it was "a massive f***n steak".

I stressed to Donaghy that he'd have to be in great condition to play as hard as I was going to demand.

"Not a bother, " Donaghy said. "I've been off the drink for six weeks."

I told him to call me the next day with his decision. Yet Donaghy never called, not until he saw us win our first home game two months later, with guys who were shorter and slower than him. We met for a second time, for a cup of tea . . .

no steaks this time . . . and I got right to the point. Donaghy nodded, his boyish face flushing. I could see he cared what I thought. He apologised profusely as his big hands clamped around a hot teapot, as though it was his penance.

"Practice for a month and I'll see how it goes, " I said. "You're going to have to really work to get in shape like the other guys."

"I'll be grand, " he said. "I've been off the drink for six weeks."

From Rus Bradburd's Paddy on the Hardwood Before there was Jack, there was Rus.

In May, 2002, Rus Bradburd was a fortysomething American burned out from 14 years of coaching Division One college basketball, when he decided to take "an easy job" by coaching the Tralee Tigers while finishing a book and indulging in his interest in the fiddle and traditional music. Many things fascinated him in his Irish stay: the Kerry tic of adding the word 'like' to everything they say, our obsession with mobile phones, and the wayward innocence and exuberance of Kieran Donaghy.

Bradburd's intention was to stay in Tralee for just the one year where "basketball couldn't overwhelm my life". He ended up staying a second year, taking a team that had finished last in the Irish Superleague to the championship itself.

His wife, Connie, might have been back in New Mexico but Kieran Donaghy was in Tralee. Paddy on the Hardwood is a delightful read with many heroes but none bigger than 'Star'. In only his second year in the league, Donaghy had won a championship and was the Superleague's player of the year. His football career would follow the same path at the same rate, but basketball had being first.

It's not that it was his first love. Ask him which sport he prefers and he says he's "right down the middle". There are times his commitment to Kerry will force him to put basketball to the side, but he can't see himself ever giving it up, "I'd miss it too much". But it was basketball that gave him his first real chance to represent. Throughout his mid-teens, he would spend weekends up in Dublin, training with the national team. The Kerry minor selectors didn't want to know him until they called him in the Tuesday before their 2001 All Ireland semi-final defeat to Dublin.

Football still occupied his dreams though. One evening Bradburd was called over to the Donaghy household to discuss Star's future with his mother, Deirdre. Donaghy hadn't a job ("F***n' plumbers are out of work all over Ireland!" he hollered) but Bradburd pointed out that Donaghy was good enough to get a basketball scholarship. Deirdre couldn't see it. "You won't be able to leave Gaelic football to go to America, " she said. "The allure of Gaelic football is too strong for any Kerry boy."

At the time Donaghy heatedly disagreed but Deirdre was right. A few months later he was called in to the Kerry under-21 squad, and although he would win a Superleague title with Tigers in '04, that summer Donaghy was drafted into the senior panel and was on the bench for the All Ireland quarter-final win over Dublin.

"When I saw Croke Park packed that day, I said, 'This is what it's all about'. It was such an honour to be on the panel.

I said to myself, 'I mightn't be too bad at this'. Before that, I'd always questioned myself when it came to football."

The doubts kept gradually disappearing. The Underdogs experience helped. Before, football had only been a summer sport for him, but slogging it out with Mickey Ned's crew helped him to get "more used to the mucky ball", something that stood to him in good stead during the leagues of '05 and '06.

This year's league semi-final was another landmark. Noel Garvan entered Fitzgerald Stadium that day as one of the country's most in-form midfielders. Donaghy wiped him out. "I suppose it was easy, playing with your man [Darragh O Se] middle of the field. There's so much attention on him. 'Keep the kickouts away from O Se.' I was loving it because when I play with the club, they keep it away from me, and now they were kicking them all down my throat."

O Se was a rock for Donaghy this year. In the first half of the league final, Donaghy hadn't hit the heights he had against Laois the previous game but O Se assured him he was doing fine and to just focus on winning the jump ball and the second half. Donaghy and O Se duly obliterated the Galway midfield. They were the best eight and nine partnership in the country and had become close friends ("Darragh would collect me for games and my grandmother would be there at the door waving at him, 'Oh, he's so handsome! Tell him I said 'Good luck'").

Then the midfield Jack built had to be broken up.

Despite Donaghy's off-court slacker persona, I'd grown to enjoy and respect him, especially the way he hustled and scrapped during games. What guts, or "bottle" as the Irish say, he had for a young kid. Something his Nan said made me like him even more.

"Every night, no matter the hour he comes home, Kieran comes into my room and gives me a kiss on the forehead." Okay. I'd overlook him using the 'f' word in front of his mother if Donaghy gave his grandmother a goodnight kiss every evening. Then, about that goodnight kiss, Nan added, "Even when he's had far too much to drink."

Rus Bradburd "We were bad that day. We got out of jail the first day, thought 'Yerra, we got our fright now, we'll go up and win this alright' and didn't. Fair play to Cork, their energy and fitness was unreal.

Billy [Morgan] had them ready for us.

But that night we had a meeting and a few drinks and it all took off from there.

Basically Darragh O Se and Seamus Moynihan told us, 'Lads, we're Kerry at the end of the day. We're way better than this. Let's keep our heads, have a few drinks tonight and get back stuck into it next Tuesday.'" It was that week they tried him out at full forward. He took Mike McCarthy for a couple of goals and a couple of points and set up a few more. Then he started playing like that in real games. In the two Munster finals against Cork, the Kerry forwards had only scored 10 points from play. In their next three games, they would score 7-22 from play, with Donaghy's fingerprints on 5-16 of their scores.

It wasn't just his redeployment that regenerated the team, there was his sheer enthusiasm. Moynihan and O'Connor are both on record about how infectious it was. They might show up some night a bit subdued, and then Donaghy would come hopping in, slagging Moynihan about some "desperate" top he might be wearing, the cue for O'Connor to note Donaghy's baggy tracksuit and tell him "to leave those bloody pyjamas at home".

All along, there were others encouraging him, especially Paul Galvin. "Every day, either at training or on the phone, he'd say to me, 'Donaghy, don't you stop 'til you get what you want.' He'd never say what it was. We both just knew."

A few things could have stopped him getting it. The attention, for one.

Streams of kids were coming in to the sports shop where he worked. Ten days before the All Ireland final, he informed his friend and boss, Wayne, that he'd be packing in the job. "To be honest, not being an asshole about it, I couldn't work with the bedlam either side of the All Ireland." Then, the Tuesday before the final, he caught a bout of the 'flu. Jack O'Connor had one look at him when he showed up at training and told him to go straight to Dr Dave Geaney for some antibiotics in Castleisland and then straight home. And so for the next few days, he rested up, drinking his water, playing Tiger Woods and NBA Live on his Playstation. And panicking.

"I could hardly sleep. I was thinking, 'I'll go out now, stink Croke Park out and they'll all say, 'Ah, Donaghy; came to the big game and he bottled it.' Gave me nightmares, boy."

To purge the torment and guilt, he went out on the Friday morning with his uncle Brian to Banna Strand. They jogged for a bit, then kicked around with an O'Neill's. "I was wrapped to the hilt, hat on, hood up, everything, and the sweat was pouring out of me. The wind was coming off the sea and I didn't want to get sick again so we hopped in the car, with the heat on. I went home, had a lovely shower and felt okay. That evening I took a bit of a turn again. I don't know, 80 per cent of that could have been in my head. I felt good on the Saturday morning, packing my bag and stuff, but when we got up to Dublin and did some sprints, I said to Doctor Dave, 'Dave, there are silver stars going around and my legs are like jelly.' He asked me when I last ate. Sure, it had been five hours. I went back to the hotel, had three breasts of chicken with pasta and spuds, and sure after that, felt perfect."

After that, it was all routine. Mr Brightside. "Alright, Mike Frank?" Dishing it off to Mike Frank, banging it into the net, and that evening in Jury's, kissing Nan on the forehead. On the Saturday morning before Darragh had called for him, she'd said, "Get me a goal." He got it. And something else. "I was there with Galvin, 'Hey, Gally, have I got what I want?' And he goes, 'Have you what you want?' Priceless, boy. Priceless."

It's been hectic ever since. There was the International Rules. That didn't go so well. After 10 weeks off the drink, he admits to "a right tank up" after the All Ireland and "wasn't in the best shape for these [Irish] tryouts where some f***r just wanted to have a cut at me". He was disgusted though he didn't get to play in the second test. "I'd love to have played, 82,000 in Croker. I know, it was a disgrace of a game. And we knew it was coming. But I'd prefer to have been out there throwing punches rather than sitting watching Marc O Se being punched around the place by some f***r that's 6'6."

The rest of it has been pretty much okay, though. Seeing the kids in the schools and the wheelchairs light up when he smiles and salutes. The extra crowds that come along to Tigers' games. He'd like to think he hasn't changed though and he'd appear right to think it. Halfway through our chat in the Brogue, he pops for a photo with Ger Power's brother, Jackie, for an ad for Jackie's taxi and bus service. After the snap, Jackie tries to call him aside, like an uncle on communion day but Donaghy sees the golden handshake coming and waves, "Forget it".

He's looking forward to getting on with the rest of his life. When the team come back from Australia, he'll be starting a new job, though he hasn't decided which one just yet. He can't wait to get back playing football games instead of just talking about them. He's looking forward to the first league game ("Beating Mayo in Mayo would be huge for us") and working with Pat O'Shea whose powers of articulation and drills in training have already impressed him. He's excited yet grounded about the year ahead.

"It's been a good year for me but I want to try to forget it now. I had a very good year but I had a very lucky year too.

I didn't have a wide in the championship, like. There was that save [Alan] Quirke made in the semi-final; everything else I kicked went over the bar or the back of the net.

"Next year balls mightn't fall into my hands, shots might hit the upright. Galvin keeps telling me to watch myself because he had a fairytale year in '04, and then the next year just felt flat from going to so many functions. It's going to be very tough for me next year and I know that while I was the hero this year, I might be the villain down the line.

"I just want to make sure that when I'm finished all this that people still like me for who I am and not just like me because I'm a footballer. I'm the kind of guy that hates when people don't like me.

Some people might have this thing, 'Ah, sure he thinks he's great because he's a footballer and a basketballer.' I wouldn't mind if I wasn't a footballer or basketballer, you know."

Some people are thankful he is though.

I'd especially miss Kieran Donaghy.

Coaches are supposed to energise players, but that somehow worked in reverse with Donaghy. His exuberance had the effect of a strong cup of tea. He became a good listener and I believe he made me a better coach. I had turned on my team in anger before he arrived, frustrated with some veterans. I needed Kieran Donaghy.

Rus Bradburd (but it could just as easily have been Jack O'Connor).