THIS is how it was. In Monaghan, the club championship was a plaything, there for Castleblayney Faughs to win it when they were of a mind to, for Scotstown to pick up when they weren't. No other club in Ireland can lay claim to as many county titles as Blayney . . . their 37 putting them one up on their neighbours from a few fields across the border in Crossmaglen. When they won the 37th in 2003, it was the 30th time in 34 years that either themselves or Scotstown had done so. You would call it a cartel but that would make it sound as if there must have been outsiders up in arms over the arrangement.

If there were, they kept it to themselves.

This is how it is, though.

For four of the past five years, Magheracloone have made it to the county final. Those four appearances (well, five . . . in 2002, they went to a replay) constitute the length and breadth of their involvement at the squeaky-bum end of the championship for the whole of their history. Never once had they made it that far before 2002; in fact, never once before 2001 had they made it past the first round.

But in 2004, they became the 15th club to be added to the Monaghan roll of honour, the first new name on the cup since the 60s.

They beat Scotstown that day by 1-10 to 0-5, with six of the points coming from the boots of the Freeman brothers, Damien and Tommy. This in itself was unusual since much more often than not, they'd be responsible between them for at least a half of any Magheracloone total. But they could live with it. Tommy had top-scored, Damien had lifted the cup and their father, Tom, had welcomed everyone in south Monaghan back to Magheracloone for the night as club chairman.

So in any look at what it is that Monaghan's captain and their best forward bring with them to the county's first Ulster final since 1988, their club is the place to start.

Magheracloone is every bit as rustic as you think it is.

It's a few square miles of hairy fields and hillocks on the way from Carrickmacross to Kingscourt and if it wasn't for the football club, it would be little more than a bend in the road. The club produced a couple of handy minor teams in the mid-90s, punctuated by the three years that separate Damien from his younger brother. When those two sides grew up and out and started spilling into the senior panel, good times were in the tea leaves. Nobody knew at the time how good, though.

"I don't think we realised until the very end what it meant to people, " says Damien. "I suppose we were just playing away and trying to do what we could. We got a bunch of lads that I would have grown up with and a bunch from Tommy's age group all through at in or around the one time and that made all the difference.

"But it wasn't until we got back to the clubhouse that night that it got to us. We had a night in there with people from all around the club and there'd been some serious footballers there over the years who never won a thing with Magheracloone, who never got to even play in a county final. And to see all them boys come up to us and congratulate us was a massive thing."

Of the pair of them, Damien is the more comfortable with a tape recorder under his nose. He's been club captain, county captain and is the longest serving player on the Monaghan panel. You want to know about bad times? Up until the win over Down in Newry a month ago, Damien Freeman had only ever been involved in two wins in the Ulster championship since his debut in 1998. The first came in 2001, a 2-10 to 0-14 victory over Fermanagh in Enniskillen and even then, his afternoon wasn't one to write home about. The only one of Monaghan's starting forwards not to score, he was substituted with five minutes to go. His replacement? His kid brother. His replacement's first act? A scintillating point on the run to put four between the sides with four minutes to go.

As for the second, the win over Armagh in 2003, he had to watch the last 20 minutes from the stands after being sent off in highly dubious circumstances by Michael Curley, a decision rubbished by any look at the tape. On both occasions, there was talk of a new dawn. On both occasions, they made it no further than the next game.

"You were playing and training but not having the belief that you could actually get to an Ulster final, " says Damien. "We won the odd championship match here and there but it would just be a session really. You'd head away off on the beer after a win and that would be that. It was really ridiculous what was happening. It's different now. Just a different set-up altogether."

"Ah yeah, definitely, " says Tommy. "There's a belief here now that was never there. It was the Ulster final we wanted this year, no question. To get to an Ulster final and to win it. We should have beaten Armagh last year but we just fell short and we knew that this year it was time to do it. Now we're in it and we're relishing the challenge. The attitude is fantastic now. Players are gelling well, getting on with each other. Everybody's getting their due. Nobody's picked on the back of their name, they're picked on what they're doing at training and that's the way to have it."

Which is all well and good, but you'd have to imagine the younger Freeman needing a long old string of stinkers in training to find himself out of the starting line-up. With Declan Browne's retirement, he's officially the most consistent scorer from play in the country. The win over Derry was the 32nd consecutive game in league and championship where he has scored at least a point from play and to give that a splash of context, the nearest anyone comes to him is Ronan Clarke on 20.

"Some people said to me after the Down match that he'd been quiet, " says Seamus McEnaney. "Quiet? The man scored five points. I'll take that kind of quiet every day. Tommy has built up a reputation for himself now that he's left trying to live up to every game. That's a measure of him that people aren't happy with five points in a game."

McEnaney was under-21 manager for two years around the turn of the century and for the second of those years, Tommy Freeman was his captain. Upon taking over the senior job, it was to the elder brother he turned.

"When I took over, " he says, "there was a consensus around the place that Damien Freeman was burnt out playing county football. But that was from people who only knew him to look at. Far from it with me. When I went in, I had it in my head that I was going to make him captain because I'd known him for years before I took over, I would have even played against him six or seven times. I knew he was a leader.

And within three months at the start of my time with the county, he confirmed everything I thought about him.

"Look, I would trust Damien with my life. That's being 100 per cent honest with you. And when you have a man like that around the place, who's respected by everybody and is happy and eager to fulfil any role you come up with for him, you have your captain. That's why I haven't changed my captain in three years."

Today, the pair of brothers will likely have Brian Dooher and Ryan McMenamin for company. That's pretty thin air to be breathing, the kind of opposition that has people countrywide predicting that they'll get their hides tanned for them.

"Maybe that's the best way, " says Tommy. "We have the belief, that's all that matters. Without it, you're as good as beat before you turn up. But we have it."

Never mind how it was.

This is how it is.